


Run

by Euphonemes



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Intrigue, Original Character(s), Political Campaigns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-09-26 02:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9857732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphonemes/pseuds/Euphonemes
Summary: As the city of Zootopia recovers from a massive conspiracy, decorated ZPD officer Judy Hopps is having trouble finding meaning in her profession. But when an old friend offers up an idea on how she can truly serve her city and find purpose again, Judy will put to the test just what it means for anyone to be anything. (Intrigue; OC; Dash of Romance).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This story stems from a personal interest in seeing how the city of Zootopia would develop after the events depicted in the film. It may seem a little slow-burn at times, but I hope you'll see the reasons for that as the story grows. I'll do my best to keep it updated with new chapters.
> 
> This story was originally started on FanFiction.net and will continue to be updated there as well. I will be posting a new chapter here every few days until the AO3 version catches up! I am also retaining the original formatting, so you will see the style change in later chapters.
> 
> Please feel free to read and share your thoughts - I appreciate good feedback!
> 
> And now, please enjoy Run. ~ Euphonemes

_Run_

"It's printed on _linen_? Well, isn't that just a shade too fancy. Sorry, can't go."

The invitation made a perceptible thump as it landed back onto the steel desk. Imprinted on the finest linen from the local stationery shop were the details for a party: names, addresses, a mouthwatering menu, an RSVP process, all written in large and fancy silver-inked calligraphy, the swooping letters glittering in the sunbeams filtering down through skylights. No expense had been spared to inform Officers Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde that their presences were requested at this grand event.

Her long gray ears drooped as her partner's vulpine paws relinquished the linen surprise that had appeared in the daily stack of mail scattered across their shared desk. In a heartbeat, Judy unleashed an adamant squeal that snaked through the aisles between rows of identical desks that made up this floor of the Zootopia Police Department's headquarters. Her tirade steamed ahead with usual speed. "Why not! The Ottertons were kind enough to invite us — they're such a nice family — so we have to go!"

The fellow officers' heads whipping toward the source of the commotion did not bother Officer Hopps. Her stalwart conviction, the tireless one and the same that had secured this job for her, directed her focus solely to Nick, invariably calm and collected. His typical snide grin flashed hints of sharpened canine teeth. He slouched against the desk's leg, the same devil-may-care attitude that had constantly frustrated her ever since she had unexpectedly met him in a popsicle shop. Though he may have traded in the dull and dingy green shirt for an iron-pressed ZPD uniform (complete with mirror-finished badge), he remained Judy's foil, as he had since his days of pawpsicle scamming.

She did not need him to say anything. His smirk gave it away. "Oh, I _hate_  it when you do that!"

The knowing chuckle escaped his grin. "And yet, you fall for it every time. Bit of a strange reason to have a party, though, don't'cha think?"

When Mr. Otterton had disappeared, and his wife had broken down outside Chief Bogo's door, Judy had done everything possible to reunite their family. And she had accomplished it — with some help, naturally. A year had passed since then. The date for the party would be the day Mr. Otterton had first vanished to be swept up in the city-wide conspiracy that had rattled Zootopia to its core. Perhaps Nick was right: it _was_ an odd anniversary to celebrate.

Nonetheless, the invitation sat, waiting to be marked and returned with their replies. Nick never backed down from this type of soiree, especially with the promise of something delectable — and free — awaiting his arrival. And Judy would certainly never disappoint the Ottertons. She motioned for Nick to take care of the invitation: a check mark next to "Attending" and a fresh stamp to send it back to their gracious hosts. His audible groan, almost petulant, was cut short when her large shimmering eyes, irises hinting of lavender, let loose a terrific glare.

"As you command," he blabbed with a mockingly graceful bow. She huffed as Nick swept up the invitation and trundled toward the post office drop box clear across the room. The desk chair squeaked as she lithely leaped into the comfortable cushion. Between colorful envelopes stuffed with junk mail were solitary forms, all half-completed by a Nick who detested the daily rounds of paperwork. One report for each crime, that was the plan...though these days, what qualified as a crime had been stretched to a ridiculous extent. Regardless, work needed to be done. Forms on three jaywalkers and a double-parked car were soon at the mercy of her pen.

Sensitive ears nabbed the sounds of the municipal police station in action as she filled in the long-winded paragraphs her partner had left blank. The cacophony of a hundred separately-set ringtones was joined by the shouts of officers in the middle of subduing a rowdy petty theft suspect, the hushed whispers of partners planning their after-work activities, the scribbles of writing instruments and the clacking of keyboards. Improperly trained ears would go mad listening to this mess. Judy added her own humming to the chorus of another busy day at ZPD as she hustled through form after form.

"Alright," Nick said as he suddenly reappeared next to Judy. Having been lost in the minutiae of a disorderly conduct report, she gasped. "Whoops, my bad there, Hopps. Didn't mean to startle ya…or did I?" The devilish grin again emerged.

Officer Nick Wilde had turned out to be quite the smart move for ZPD. His knowledge, garnered from years of street survival, more than compensated for the lack of paperwork expertise. Together, Nick and Judy had been two parts of a potent and balanced team, dispatched to mop up crime around the districts of Zootopia. They had done so with unequaled efficiency. Promotions that had once taunted them from far away now loomed, to be attained with an unprecedented speed. For Judy, a new title meant little, but she would catch Nick silently salivating at the prospect on the way out of the office before they shuffled off down the road in separate directions.

Nick wheeled over the chair from the adjoining desk and pulled up alongside Judy. The moment his paws touched the steel desktop, she slammed down a stack of forms and wordlessly pointed to them. With a resigned sigh, he began scribbling. "Well, Hopps," he said after laboriously filling in the "Name of Reporting Officer" box, "I'll be curious to see what the turnout at this shindig will be. A week's notice is not much to go on."

* * *

 

In a rare chivalric gesture, Nick had left the driver's seat and opened the car door for her. He had commandeered a police cruiser for the evening's festivities. Hopefully, no one would be terribly upset at their borrowing the newest and shiniest model. Before he had exited, a quick honk from the horn had signaled his curbside arrival, and Judy had bounded out the apartment lobby in a few steps.

She giggled as she daintily slipped into the passenger seat and smoothed out the ruffles forming in her gossamer evening gown while Nick shut the door behind her. The obsidian fabric strikingly complemented her coat of gray fur. Once Nick had started the car and pulled back into traffic, she caught his eyes as they sidled over to her seat.

"Watch the road, Mister Wilde."

He acquiesced with an amused grunt. The week had simply vanished. Truant kids and moving violations, with all their accompanying grueling paperwork, had devoured one workday after another. Whether completed by pen or by keyboard, forms had flown from inbox to outbox, leaving behind parting gifts of cramps that had nearly incapacitated her forelimbs. The ceaseless exasperated breaths and noisy puttering of her more deskwork-averse partner had not abated the pain.

Nick cleared his throat. She turned and listened. "We all missed you today at our all-team meeting."

She cracked a sheepish smirk as her eyes found the window once more. Streetlights flickered as they pulled onto a major road. "I know, I didn't wanna sneak out." An absentminded paw rolled around a wrinkle of the dress's sheer fabric. She whipped back to Nick and planted a big grin on her face. "But I had to go pick up this dress! What do you think?"

His chuckle made his amusement evident. "Hopps, it was totally worth skipping out on work for. You look absolutely ravishing."

"Hmph. What a charmer." Her look of derision belied the warm glow materializing in her belly. She shuffled her oblong feet and listened to the folds of the dress swish in the cabin. Judy knew the drive would not be long, since she had looked up their route (and three alternate ones) beforehand. She was content to lean back and savor the ride.

Yet, even as the roads passed, curiosity nagged. "So what happened at this meeting?"

Nick clicked his tongue. "Eh, nothing special. Pinch hitter Francine joined the precinct's softball team, so they'll crush the fire department next week. They're slashing overtime pay — all the more reason to skip out. And then there was some new system they're installing in the phone lines."

"A new system?"

"Yeah, guess there's been some push for a…what'd Bogo call it, a _transparency initiative_ , that's it. Gonna record all incoming calls to the ZPD emergency hotline and then publish them online for public review."

"Oh. That sounds…interesting…but what if people don't want anyone to know they called? Or what if it's something super-secret?" Her paws were buzzing in her lap as caveats rapidly formed in her agile mind.

Nick slowed the car, the engine purring in harmony with the others in the sparse traffic. Their final turn was approaching. "I don't know, there was something about an algorithm or…look Hopps, just ask Bogo when you're in next. Hmm, won't he be delighted to find out you blew off his important meeting…."

He meant it teasingly, Judy knew, but he was far from incorrect. Judy did not want the wrath of Chief Bogo hanging over her head for long. She swallowed and then squeezed her paws until the car rolled to a stop.

Out the window, she saw a steady stream of visitors pouring into the Otterton residence. It was a modest home, distant enough from the main city to give adequate space for the one-floor ranch, but not the acreage to fit the palatial estates of those who lived out in the far reaches of districts like Tundratown. And tonight, there were sufficient partiers to have them fill the home and spill back out onto the neatly manicured lawn. As gregarious as Judy was, she balked at the crowd's size.

"Well then, looks like they got plenty of RSVPs. C'mon Hopps, let's get in there before all the good stuff is picked clean." Oblivious to Judy's abrupt attack of nerves, Nick exited the car and came round to open her door. Judy just then noticed Nick's choice of attire: a fascinating interpretation of semi-formal. His jacket was nearly a tuxedo, save for the secondhand fabric used in its construction. No tie — she had rather liked the slim striped one with which he had once adorned his neck. The shirt fit loosely, a snappy oxford for whatever creature had owned it before Nick, and it was mostly tucked into the pants that were just a hair long on the inseam. All told, it was maybe a bit too dressy, but otherwise a commendable effort from Nick.

"Eyes on the road, Miss Hopps." The door stood open, and Judy returned to the task at hand. She summoned a sly grin that elicited a chuckle from Nick, and she stepped out. As her feet alighted onto the pavement, an airiness overtook her, and soon, she and Nick cut through the amorphous crowd and swam upstream into the home proper.

* * *

 

Immediately upon entry, Nick broke their tight formation and headed directly for the buffet table. Judy's nose twitched as an especially pungent carrot scent wafted among the throngs of mammals. She tried to follow Nick, but a few partygoers stationed by the front door recognized her. The usual laudations followed forthwith.

"Thank you for your service!"

"You are a blessing to this city, ma'am."

"What you did — oh, I couldn't _imagine_! You must have been terrified!"

Patterns emerged in these trite adulations. She was always grateful, truly she was. She would fawn over their compliments and leave them smiling. Yet, her highly trained mind never failed to catch the signposts: "thank you," "brave," "true civil servant," "I saw you on TV."

There had been a lot of buzz following the Night Howler Incident, and she had been positioned at its very center. Interviews, appearances, swanky events: everything Judy Hopps hated.  _A necessary part of the job_ , she had been told. Fortunately, Nick's wily brain had been invaluable in navigating these brightly-lit studios and dusky mixers. Without his guidance, Judy shuddered to think of what would have tumbled forth from her untrained mouth.

Even now, with the most basic of congratulations, the nervousness she had felt in the car was resurfacing. She flashed a winsome smile a few more times, then excused herself and dove into the party mob. Several more shouts of recognition popped up from various corners in the house, but she ducked and dodged, and cleared the room without engaging in another conversation. She came to rest against the inner wall of the Ottertons' living room, where she fortuitously found her host.

"Oh, Mr. Otterton! How nice to see you again!"

Mr. Otterton looked exactly the same as he did during their last meeting, save for the festive rainbow bowtie festooned around his neck. Wisps of chestnut fur poked out from the sleeves of his sweater as he waved hello to his guest. After a quick adjustment of his spectacles, he was alongside Judy.

"Officer Hopps! Or, ehm, Lieutenant Hopps, or, uh…I'm sorry…."

The laugh was automatic, but it was genuine and amicable. "No, please, Judy is fine."

"Of course, of course," he murmured, clearly appreciative of Judy's assistance. "Well then, _Judy_ , thank you for coming by tonight! It's certainly an honor to have you in our home."

"The honor is mine. You have a lovely house! Is this…where you lived before, or…?"

He tugged on one of his sweater's sleeves, a nervous tic perhaps. "Ah, no, we moved fairly recently. Our family needed more space than we could get in the city proper."

"Naturally!" Judy offered a polite smile, which seemed to set her host at greater ease.

"So...I was going to take a walk and observe, make the sure the party is still in order here. Probably stop by the kitchen, too. The caterers left a special soufflé with a good-sized pitcher of carrot purée…if you'd be interested in joining me, then…."

Her stomach rumbled at the thought. She picked up the bits of the scent from before as more partiers disturbed the air with their raucous movements. "Lead the way!"

Judy and Mr. Otterton ambled along the perimeter and chatted, straining to heave their voices over the din of the partying crowd. They discussed what had changed during the past year and touched briefly on plans for the future. Judy listened with interest, but she kept an eye peeled for her partner, who had yet to surface from his foray into the buffet line.

"I really struggle to believe that it's been a full year since…."

That drew Judy's attention. She stopped, immobilized by a burning question. Mr. Otterton noticed and waited patiently by the entryway to the kitchen.

"Sir, if I may," she began while kicking at the carpeting (made of incredibly soft fabric), "why did you pick _today_ to celebrate? I mean, it's the day a year ago when you were…."

"When I was taken, you mean?" She nodded, and he sighed. Spectacles lifted from the bridge of his nose, and he polished each lens carefully with the edge of his sweater. "Because, Judy, it's the day everything in my life changed."

He replaced his spectacles and blinked a few times as Judy stayed still. "Before I was taken, I did not…appreciate, truly and meaningfully appreciate, everything I had. My wife, I've always loved her dearly, but I _expected_ , always, to come home to her. And to hold my kids as they ran up to the door. When that was suddenly no longer a certainty, it…well, it changed my whole perspective. My outlook on everything. Problems at work or the little nagging complaints that stick with you…in a flash, none of it mattered. All I wanted was to come home and be with my family.

"So today, this _day_ , is to remind me of just how important it is to cherish the ones in our lives. And I'm happy to share in this with all of my friends…and some of their friends, too, it seems. I don't recall sending out that many invitations…."

Judy was awestruck. Mr. Otterton, unassuming Mr. Otterton, had completely floored her. He stood tall in the entryway, beaming with a joy that must have been fastidiously collected every day this past year, only to burst forth on this one wonderful night in a celebration with friends and family. A pang of nostalgia for Bunnyburrow manifested for a moment within Judy, but she quickly cleared it out and joined Mr. Otterton in his revelry.

"Thank you for sharing that with me, sir."

"And thank you for sharing this night with me, Judy. Now, what say we dig into this meal, yes?"

* * *

 

Seven massive glasses of carrot purée later, Judy and Mr. Otterton were really starting to enjoy the party. It was a littler waterier than she had expected, but even so, there was something else about the way the purée was blended, something special about this concoction. And whatever it was, it left Judy absolutely giddy. She was crying with laughter at Mr. Otterton's surprisingly accurate impressions of TV stars and politicians. Inexplicably, he was able to copy exactly the mannerisms of Gazelle. As he sashayed around the empty tiled kitchen, where nothing else exciting was occurring, Judy poured herself another tall glass and tapped out a beat for her host.

Mr. Otterton's antics proved refreshing, though terribly tiring. He was breathing heavily as he scooted up a stool to the granite-covered kitchen island, where Judy sat nursing her freshly filled glass.

"Where is Mrs. Otterton, sir?"

"Oh, she's in that mess somewhere. She's much better at the entertainment bit than I am."

"I don't know, sir. You have some pretty good moves!"

He guffawed while dragging the half-devoured soufflé closer to the edge of the island. Even though the kitchen was devoid of other guests, it still felt a little cramped to Judy. She noted internally that such a judgment coming from someone who lived in an apartment barely big enough to fit a bed may not be the most accurately developed.

"Judy," Mr. Otterton spoke with a mouthful of soufflé, "may I ask you a more personal question?"

"Sure, sir."

He fidgeted in his stool, the discomfort plain to the expert eye of a ZPD officer. "I don't want to be offensive with this. But, for my own curiosity…have you been able to… _put to use_  what happened a year ago?"

Judy's brow furrowed in puzzlement while she took a big swig of her carrot purée. "What do you mean?"

"Well I… you know, this house here is a good example. There was never going to be a way I could've afforded it with what I had been earning before I was taken. Afterward, with the interviews and a really, eh,  _lucrative_ book deal, I paid  _cash_ for this place. A place where I can raise my family properly."

Myriad offers had fallen into Judy's lap, all of which she had eschewed with boilerplate language. _Thank you for your interest. My work in the Night Howler Incident was simply part of fulfilling my civic duty as an officer of the Zootopia Police Department. I have had the great distinction of serving my community, and…._

"I hope I'm not being too intrusive, Judy, I'm just…I'm sorry, I shouldn't pry. Maybe it's this purée…" he trailed off as he drained the dredges of his own clear plastic cup —  he had bestowed upon Judy the singular haute chalice from the kitchen cupboard.

"No, you're fine, sir. I guess…I guess I never really liked the spotlight. I only wanted to do what was right."

His smile upturned the corners of his mouth (now soufflé free). Barely noticeable dimples formed in his cheeks. "I'm so glad to hear that, Judy. I think many of this city's citizens would have…not necessarily _exploited_ , but probably taken some significant advantage of the attention that came with this case. And I think… you not doing that, maybe that's why so much of Zootopia likes you."

That sentiment felt pervasive wherever Judy went. At first, she had feared it was a bout of narcissism: thinking everyone's eyes always watched her or studied her from afar. It turned out she had been right. Eventually, the gawkers all summoned the courage to converse, and the unrelenting waves of compliments and congratulations began. The passage of time perhaps eroded her mystique, the aura of the great guardian of Zootopia transforming into something more relatable...something likable.

"Okay then, sir. If everyone _likes_  me…" she paused for another drink, "…what should I do with my  _fame_?" She threw back her head in a faux hair tousle and posed for a nonexistent camera. This made carrot purée shoot from Mr. Otterton's nose.

Judy gasped, but it was only a prelude to a modest chuckle. " _Ack_! Oh my, I wasn't ready for that!" His cheeriness did not depart as he dabbed at the orange dribbled down his sweater (though the festive bow tie remained remarkably immaculate). "But, in all seriousness, Judy," he started again once he regained his composure, "I think there's something you could do that could help a lot of us here in Zootopia."

Interest unquestionably piqued, she leaned in, her carrot-filled chalice firmly ensnared in her grip. "And what's that?"

Mr. Otterton had set aside his beverage — likely the ornate scent profile of the carrots, spices, and other additives was now implanted in his nostrils — and he adopted a certain air. It wasn't pedantic...Judy felt it was more instructional or even probing. "Do you follow politics, Judy?"

 _No_. "Occasionally."

"Then you are likely aware that an election cycle is fast approaching?"

Coincidentally, Judy had been informed that was the case through one of Bogo's all-team meetings. It had been the one before the meeting she most recently skipped, in fact. The chief had wanted teams on standby for what he believed was to be a contentious election and to plan ahead for riot control, even though the campaign season had still been a relatively long way off.  _Probably Bogo being overcautious_ , Judy thought, but she had perked up in her seat as her little team had been assigned their various (and droll) duties. She nodded, which was much to Mr. Otterton's delight.

"Splendid! Well, you know that Former Mayor Lionheart has been imprisoned ever since he… _mishandled_  the Night Howler business."

Judy detected the inkling of loathing in Mr. Otterton's tone. She knew he was not a spiteful man, but given the hardships he underwent during that time, she perfectly understood the source of his tone's darker undercurrent.

"And after he left," he soldered on while Judy almost finished her glass, "he was stripped of his authority. And with Bellwether out, the line of succession was pretty well busted. So somebody somewhere decided there should be appointed an emergency manager to run the show. A wolf by the name of Lobos got the job, and he and his staff have been in there for a little while now. But Lobos, he's a crony, Judy, a rusty cog of an old system. Stale, unimaginative, he's left everything stagnant. _Nothing_  really changed once Lionheart got the boot."

Judy pulled off some mental backflips as she tried to reconcile her image of Mr. Otterton the family man with Mr. Otterton the astute politico. As such, she missed the nuances of his discussion and made the wise decision to keep mum at this point.

"So we need a refresh," Otterton was happy to fill the gap. "Someone new, who citizens _trust_  to look out for them. One of their own, not some appointee made by…well, who knows who."

The sinking feeling from the car struck again with a vengeance. She gulped down the rest of her carrot purée, hoping it would shove out that stone sitting in her gut. It didn't. "Do…do you want to run against this Lobos guy?" She knew the answer, but she hoped she was wrong.

She wasn't. "Oh no! No, my place is here, with my family. I'm…not made for that, I don't think." The small pause extended for an eternity. Judy's paws buzzed as her mind raced to answer what was coming next. "But _you_ , Judy. You could do it."

She decided to play coy. Perhaps she could lead Mr. Otterton to talk himself out of it. "Do what, sir?"

Even after downing so much carrot purée, Mr. Otterton retained enough of his wits not to fall into such an obviously laid trap. "Think about it. Everyone in this city _adores_ you. You're honest, true to your word. You care about us, all of us. You have a real civic mind and a kind heart, Judy. You would be  _perfect_."

She abruptly found herself stuck in a mental sludge, brought on by the glasses she had emptied. Arguments formed languidly and then broke apart under her detective mind's scrutiny. "But I've only lived here a year, sir. There's no way I can understand the city's needs."

It was a weak jab, and Otterton easily countered. "So what? You've been in the _streets._  You've gotten to know the real folks here. You've made Zootopia your home. We all see that and  _respect_ it."

"But I'm…I'm not a politician, sir! I'm a police officer."

"And maybe that's precisely what we need, Judy. Someone like you who is far removed from that old machine. You could shed a light on so many of the real issues that plague our city — you've seen them, you know them. You could make a real difference."

Mr. Otterton, unassuming Mr. Otterton, was turning out to be an impressively eloquent speaker. Conceivably, Judy could have missed that before: too focused on the Night Howler craze, most likely. Judy considered how much thought and planning Otterton had given to this notion. She recognized she was too deep into the purée to successfully fight against his obviously well-formulated idea.

Retreat became the clearest option. "Okay sir, I'll think about it, alright?"

His voice softened a tad, edging on conciliatory. "I know, it's a lot to drop on you, right in my kitchen. You came here for a good time, and I'm boring you with all this…." Then, he pressed with a final surge. "But, I just want you to know that I'm not the only one who thinks this. There are a great number of us, Judy, we who are grateful for what you've done. You'd find a lot of support."

Stunned into silence, Judy leaned onto the cold and soothing granite countertop on the kitchen island. She wanted to lay her head down and let these fanciful notions spurred by copious amounts of purée float past, out and up to the clouds where they belonged. Instead, she giggled.

"Ah, good, I had thought I'd scared away your laughter. I had a few more impressions that could've helped but…oh _no_ , this stain is going to set in!" Mr. Otterton picked at the drying mess splashed across his sweater. "I suppose I should go find the missus."

"And I should find Nick." A solid plan of action developed, and Judy jumped down from the stool only to land on wobbly feet. _Cut back on the purée next time_ , her mind admonished while her paw sought a stable hold.

"Here, let me help…" Mr. Otterton fussed with his sweater while he dismounted. He made a crook in his forelimb and extended it to Judy, who gratefully accepted.

"Thank you, Mr. Otterton."

"You're most welcome. And next time, Emmitt is fine."

With steadier feet, they both walked past the island, past the omnipresent scent of carrot, and past the ideas tossed out between orange-tinted glasses.

* * *

 

"Nick!"

She nearly bowled over a gaggle of partygoers when she saw her partner. Poor Mr. Otterton was dragged along behind, but he managed to muster sufficient strength to hold tightly.

With a loud thump, Judy planted her feet a couple dozen inches from Nick's. "Hey!" she practically shouted.

"Hey there, Hopps. Looks like you've been having a little fun."

She sloppily nodded for several unbroken seconds, which brought forth Nick's grin. "Time to go home, Hopps?"

"Yes!" As luck would have it, the commotion had drawn in Mrs. Otterton, who looked stunning in her emerald evening attire, a far cry from the bawling woman Judy had so serendipitously met long ago. As Judy slipped from her host's arm, a newly freed Mr. Otterton could pull in his wife for a warm embrace before showing off his stained sweater with a weird pride. The couple talked among themselves as Nick donned the mantle of responsibility and stabilized Judy with a free paw.

"Officer Hopps, thank you for stopping by!" Mrs. Otterton effused. "I wanted the kids to see you, too, but we sent them to a relative for the evening. We figured they'd be bored silly with all these grown-ups!"

Judy and Nick shared a smile, but neither had anything clever to offer. To say the least, Judy was shocked that Nick was without a witty retort. Maybe Nick had been ready to conclude his evening for some time, only staying behind at her behest. Her nerves flared up again.

Mrs. Otterton noticed the unusual awkwardness, too, and pivoted like a skilled socialite. "Well, either way, I'm so glad you and Officer Wilde could make it."

"Happy to be here, ma'am!" Judy started swaying gently. She caught the taps of Nick's paw as it tried to center itself. "You have a lovely home and family!"

"Yes you do, she's right about that!" Nick's paw, now solidly placed on the square of her back, was guiding her body toward the front door. "But duty will call soon, and it's about time we turn in. Gotta keep the city safe!"

Mr. Otterton's bespectacled eyes lit up as he caught on. "Of course! Thank you both. We hope to see you again soon!"

Nick smiled and then, with a curt shove, hastened their departure. As they stepped over the threshold, Judy noticed how hot the house had been. Chilly breezes blew through the night sky, which had sent many outdoor partiers scrambling for shelter. She rued her decision of a sleeveless dress and began shivering on the short walk to the car.

They stopped briefly, and then something heavy ran along her neck. She looked down to the black lapels of Nick's jacket draped over her shoulders. Her shivers subsided, and Nick deftly maneuvered her through the lawn and down the street, right up to the side of their car.

Once Nick had situated her in the cabin, Judy rested her head against the cool tempered glass of the passenger window. The Otterton house picked up and moved away, disappeared as the engine rumbled. The streetlights appeared again overhead as halogen stars to lead her home.

Her nose twitched. She eyed her driver. "Hey, Nick…how much of that buffet did you stuff into your pants pocket?"

The knowing grin was plastered on his face. "A third of the party platter. It's pretty good. Want some?"

"No! You keep your _pocket snacks_. That's…that's all you."

"Your loss," Nick opined as he fished out something that sounded tasty when he crunched into it. "So, you and Otterton," Nick managed between loud bites, "what were you doing in there? You two were gone for a while."

Judy laughed. Though there was no reason for it in this instance, Nick being protective brought her a special kind of joy. "Just chatting."

"C'mon, Hopps. What were you up to?"

She scoffed at needing to rebuff Nick's inquisitiveness, her own curious nature apparently rubbing off on him. He could be pushy, doubtlessly so, but prying into things was not as useful of a skill for someone who made his living on the street. _Much more like a detective._

"Mhm… y'know, when did you stop calling me _Carrots_?"

"I can if you want me to, Carrots. Doesn't bother me."

She hummed a few bars of nothing in particular. The folds of the dress swished as she dallied. "Hmm…no, I like Hopps. You say it in a funny way. Hopps. _Hopps_ …too much emphasis on the 'p' sound, Nick."

He sounded more strained than normal. "I'll take that under advisement, Hopps." For a couple moments, Judy pursed her lips, wondering if her giddiness bothered her partner. It was maddening for him, perhaps, this reversal of roles: her now carefree and him the worrywart. A new streetlight shone brilliantly through the crystal windowpane, though, and she was smiling again. Nick, however, was not through. "Now, you and Otterton?"

"Oh yeah! He… had this …." She broke out into spontaneous giggling. It really was a funny proposition, now that she had left behind the heady kitchen air. "Okay, so…he thinks I should run."

The pause was so long that Judy had enough time to be distracted by every button on the dashboard before Nick said, "Run?"

"For _mayor_ , Nick! Otterton wanted me to run for mayor — can you even  _believe_ that!"

She had planned for a laugh, or a huff of disbelief, or even a gentle rebuke. Instead, Nick met the insane development with ponderous silence.

Another turn of the wheel passed, and Nick said nothing. Though her mind was addled after Otterton's bacchanal, she could rather effortlessly determine why his quietness persisted. "Not you _too_ !" Judy could barely restrain herself. Otterton formulating this crazy scheme was one thing, but  _Nick_ …there was no way he could be swayed so easily.

"Why not, Hopps? You'd be good at it."

"No, I'm _good_  at being a cop!" She did not mean to pout. She actually appreciated Otterton's assessment and accompanying vote of confidence. But, whether due to the long and tedious week in the office or the pitcher of purée she had polished off this evening, revisiting the whole proposition in the car ride home brought forth an unpleasant and unwanted scowl.

"Yes, you are. And you'd also make a great mayor."

"But I — no, I just…" she spluttered in the face of explaining herself again so soon. The carrot concoction had taken full effect: had her mind been slowed earlier, now it was practically at a standstill. She was forced to repeat her argument. "I'm not a politician, Nick."

Nick cranked the wheel to slide through a sharp left turn. They were nearly home, as far as she could tell. "Well, anyone can be anything, right?"

As the car straightened, Judy's mouth fell open. "Oh, you must _stop_! That's not…applicable here."

"And why's that? Just taking that to its logical conclusion. If you can be anything, why not be the mayor?" He fed the engine with more fuel, and the car jerked as it revved. "Does have a certain ring to it, yeah?  _The Honorable Judy Hopps, Mayor of Zootopia._ That'd go to your head pretty fast."

Judy would have huffed, but she found it difficult to feign dislike for the title. With that little extra pressure that Nick added to the 'p' in Hopps, it did gain a certain entrancing quality. Of course, this all may simply have been Nick being Nick, and her mind had already practically surrendered for the evening. "It's nice."

"Oh, _just_ nice? C'mon, Hopps, you know it's fantastic."

She couldn't suppress the giggle in time. Nick seemed to delight in this fact. "Fine, it's _really_ nice, okay?"

He laughed as the car pulled up to the curb. Parking lights splashed onto the sidewalk. He made a move to open the door and step around the car, but Judy beat him to it.

"Thanks, Nick. I'm glad we were able to go." Before disembarking, she shimmied her shoulders in an attempt to shrug off Nick's jacket. In cramped quarters, it became a surprisingly challenging exercise.

She had almost gotten out of one sleeve when he piped up with, "Keep it. It's cold outside."

"But what about you?"

"I'll be fine. I'm better insulated." He picked at a stray strand of fur that had surreptitiously snuck out of the cuff of his oxford shirt. His devilish grin shone in the backsplash of headlights illuminating the car bumper ahead. His canine teeth gleamed in a striking manner, not scary or feral, but alluring, in a way. Perhaps it was the smile altogether that accentuated their look: the synergy of the lift in his cheekbones, the neat pearly rows, the light gathering at pointed cuspid tips. She returned the smile, heartfelt but only half as endearing, she felt.

She replaced the jacket on her shoulder, which was a much simpler task. Her feet had been shaky in the air, but once they connected with the concrete, she was stable. "Well…good night, Nick."

Parking lights were doused as he shifted the car into drive. "Good night, _Mayor_ Hopps."

"You'd best stop it now!" she shouted as she shut the car door with a solid clunk, trapping his laugh in there with him.

As the car pulled away, Judy waited outside. She just wanted a few moments before she headed back to her tiny slice of solitude in the high-rise. The chilly breeze brushed against her cheek, and she closed her eyes.

" _The Honorable Judy Hopps, Mayor of Zootopia_ ."  _A nice ring to it, indeed_.

#

 _Disclaimer_ _: Zootopia is not mine. But enjoy the story anyway._


	2. Chapter 2: Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point in my process, I had decided to start trying out the format that I used throughout the rest of the story. Rather than have several sections in one chapter (like we saw in Chapter 1), I divided each section into its own “Part.” (This chapter was two Parts long as I was still testing out the idea, but the rest are just one Part). I was able to share these more quickly with readers like you, and I was able to expand on some of the stuff they cover. So far, I think it’s worked out well!
> 
> So, please enjoy Chapter 2: Part I of Run!
> 
> Best ~ Euphonemes

_Run_

The aviators, which had been folded up and stowed in a secondhand jacket's pocket, cast a blue-tinted shadow over the bustling street outside ZPD Headquarters. Yet, the light from the morning sun shone strongly enough that beams still pierced the lenses and worsened her pounding migraine. She stood still, letting it all pass by, trapped in a dyspeptic state as the front doors of her office beckoned to begin the day anew.

She had tossed and turned in her bed as the vestiges of the purée dissipated in the warm unconditioned atmosphere of her tiny apartment. One in the morning had passed to two, then three, and soon the sun had peeked above the horizon; golden rays landed squarely on her bleary eyes. Carrot purée, it seemed, did not settle well with Judy.

Or perhaps, she wondered, the purée made up only a portion of her problem. As she sat on the curb, biding time until her partner arrived, Emmitt's words fluttered delicately around the sharp pains in her head. It was still ludicrous, even after a bad night's sleep, but, between her aching temples, the tiniest of thoughts formed.  _What if Emmitt is right?_

The blatting horn of a passing car — agony incarnate — awoke her from her silly daydream. She leaned back and felt the city. The screeching of tires, the chattering of assorted mammals, the flashing neon signs, the mingling scents of food carts and sweat and oil: it all overwhelmed Judy. She had not waited long enough for Nick, of that she was sure. Yet, the feel of the city proved too strong. Judy pushed herself off the curb and plodded inside, all the while massaging her sensitive head.

The bustle inside was much more familiar and a little comforting. The chilled office air soothed Judy, and as she walked through the lobby, her head lightened and her pain subsided. Her path took her by the ominous front desk overlooking the front entrance of Headquarters; it was a parapet manned by a much-less-ominous officer. The rotund cheetah who practically resided there swiveled in his chair and gave Judy a wild wave. "Hey, Judy! How are you this morning!" His voice, usually a pleasant if excitable sound, was grating today. His energetic shouts tore through her skull.

Pain swelled again and, with the aviators still on her face, she decided a curt wave would have to do. "Clawhauser."

She pivoted, unspeakably eager to escape the lobby guard on this roughest of mornings. But no sooner did she turn for the staircase than did a fog of crumbs from a hundred little snacks burst into the chilled air. A nearly circular shadow cast itself over Judy, who nearly had to clamp her mouth with her hand to stop the sigh. "Hang on, Judy, I'll walk you to your desk! Just found out something you're gonna wanna hear!"

_The usual Clawhauser_. For him, it seemed every day presented an opportunity for show-and-tell. He would even put on a juvenile grin and bounce like a kit, threating to explode if he couldn't share the latest mobile app or trivium pulled from late-night television. Judy would oftentimes pay enough attention to satiate Clawhauser. But today, Judy desperately craved the cold steel of her desk, with the siren song of a mid-morning nap ringing loud and clear.

He rattled on as they ascended and entered the aisles cut between identical desks. She counted the rows, anything to distract herself from the migraine's fury. Clawhauser's prattle was the wrong kind of distraction. "So I was digging around on the app store and found this cool recording bit! It's like your carrot pen but better, cuz it—"

"Clawhauser. Please." She was icy like the steel of her desk. She liked Clawhauser. His friendliness was typically appreciated, but just not today. She wished she could have formed the right words to let him down gently, but the sheer agony of her headache and the exhaustion of a sleepless night all culminated in two little words spoken with deliberate purpose to a good friend.

Maybe he understood — though if he did, he still could not hide his wounds. With downcast eyes, he lazily thumbed the screen of the phone he had pulled from his pocket mid-conversation. "…I was just gonna say it…alters your voice, too." A bright spark ignited once again. "Hey! You wanna demo? I…." Judy's unmoved aviators made her response clear. "Eh, no, you don't want a demo, do you…okay, I'll just, um, go back to my desk, and…."

"Ah, look what the cat dragged in…how are ya this fine morning, Clawhauser?"

Never had Judy let Nick beat her to the office. Never. She had to vigorously rub her bleary eyes to be certain. But there, looking almost prim and proper in the chair, was an engaged and hard-at-work Nick bedecked in a freshly pressed uniform.

"Oh, hey Nick, I'm…alright. Just brought your partner, looks like it's been a rough morning for her, so I'm just gonna…go…."

Judy shouted after her dejected friend as he lumbered back toward the staircase. "Wait, Clawhauser, I—wait!  _Gah!_ "

"Aw, did you break Clawhauser? For shame, Hopps."

Judy wheeled around as Nick's comment floated past, and she opened up a frightful glare. When Nick stood passively for several heartbeats, though, it dawned on her that she was only glaring into the lenses of her aviators. As consolation, she managed an impotent grumble while she plodded toward the desk and toward Nick, who hopped out of the chair upon her arrival.

As she passed by, he hummed. "Y'know, those shades of yours look awfully familiar…."

"Oh…yeah, sorry, you can, here— _ah_." As the aviators left their perch atop her little nose, she squinted her large and shimmering eyes to dam the torrent of sunlight from the skylights above. She withstood the onslaught for a solid four seconds before she hurriedly shoved the sunglasses back onto her face.

Nick seemed to think it was funny. "That bad? No more carrot juice for you, Carrots." Before Judy could interject, Nick continued with a more sincere smile. "Tell ya what then. Hang on to 'em for now, but  _don't_  break 'em. They're my favorite pair."

The urge to correct her partner momentarily suppressed her gratitude. "First of all, it was  _purée_ , Nick…and thanks."

"Sure — we've all been there before." His forelimbs guided her into the chair, which sighed comfortingly as she sunk into its pillowy embrace. Her pain was immediately subdued, and her head wilted onto the cool steel of her desk. The sounds of the precinct dissolved into a blissful silence; even Nick refrained from his usual noisemaking. Quietness settled in, and she let it soothe her tired self.

She earned about a minute of silence before the phone rang. The desk line — she had always wondered why they still had this antiquated landline phone that would shake violently as it rang — bleated in familiar tones. Nick was quicker on the draw, which was a fight she was happy to concede.

"Yeah, boss?" Only one other officer in this precinct ever called that line. "Shoplifter? Yep, we're on it!"

A case — right now, a real case. Judy groaned audibly, not afraid to hide her displeasure at this new task. Yet, excitement fizzled within her gut. It was more than jaywalking or illegally parked cars. There could even be a chase, though the thought of running in her current state turned her stomach.

"C'mon partner, hop to it!" Judy was on her feet, dragged along by Nick's sure grip. She felt the tiniest of tremors vibrating through his paw; he shared the same anticipation that she had. They left Headquarters and reentered the bath of sunlight. Nick expertly tracked down their cruiser and threw open the doors. As he shoved her into the passenger seat, he let out a thought that must have been bothering him for some time this morning. "And hey — where's my jacket?"

Judy's sluggish reply caught in her throat as Nick slammed the accelerator.

* * *

 

The store alarm warbled over the blaring siren and squealing tires of their police cruiser as they pulled up. It was an awful collection of sounds, really. An older bell, clanking as a little hammer struck its interior, was situated above the shop door, which had been kicked out and now hung on the bottommost hinge. Judy covered her ears and groaned, stumbling a bit as she and her partner ran to the source of this tremendous commotion.

Standing in the door jamb, the shop owner — a middle-aged marmot whose fur bristled with fury and chubby belly shook with rage — screamed an octave higher than his store's blasted alarm. "Help! Help! Officers! He's getting away!" During his shouts, the marmot shoved a finger toward the street corner. Through the blue tint of her borrowed aviators, Judy nabbed the sight of a furry heel as it rounded the brick building at the end of the block.

Nick must have spotted it, too. "We got a runner!"

_Finally!_ The rush of excitement was followed by a touch of guilt. She should not have been so thrilled at the commission of a crime, but paperwork had taken such a heavy toll. From her office chair, she had pined for even a mere glimpse of the death-defying terror she and Nick had faced before.

"Mine!" Judy heard herself shout as her migraine evaporated, and the pain gave way to the pressure on her feet as they pounded the pavement.

"Careful, Hop—" Nick's cry couldn't cut the corner as smoothly as she did. Twenty steps ahead ran a shaggy ochre lynx; the tufts of charcoal fur atop its ears were blown back by its own slipstream. Padded paws made more noise on the concrete than Judy would have expected — potentially the hallmark of a hidden tool stashed between its toes…or perhaps it was a weapon.

Alarm fueled her commanding tone. "Stop! Police!"

She was ineffective, it seemed, as the feline raced on. Bemused bystanders were shoved and pushed out of the way by this lynx's outstretched paw. Judy squinted as she accelerated, and she noticed the suspect was cradling something. This thing was roundish, right about the size of a newborn rabbit.

Judy sped up as she jumped over the fallen citizens. The lynx looked young, perhaps only having shed its fur a few times. It was certainly fast — a practiced thief, possibly. But, Judy's powerful legs would quickly outpace her quarry on the open stretch of sidewalk. She kept waiting for the lynx to slip through an alleyway, or duck into some hidey-hole, or even change direction and go down another street.

Yet, the lynx seemed determined to reach the end of this particular road. Ten blocks passed, then fifteen; the gap narrowed inch by inch. Pedestrians had gotten wise and were sidestepping the pursuit, though Judy's continued shouts to "Move!" and "Make a hole!" doubtlessly helped. The duo almost reached twenty city blocks by the time she got a paw on the lynx's flapping gingham shirttails.

The square of fabric she nabbed was enough to break the lynx's stride. They collided and went to the ground hard. Judy shut her eyes — only for few blinks — when the concrete met her nose. She was a tough bunny, but even she admitted to herself that it stung. She opened her eyes to stare at the ground. Surprisingly, she found the blue filter had dissolved.

A forelimb's length away lay the shattered remains of the aviators. Slivers of blue were scattered across the slate gray sidewalk. She growled as she rose and inspected the bent wire frames with a quivering foot. Nick would not be pleased.

"No…no, so close…so…." The lynx spoke. He was a youthful countertenor, though his words dragged along with his body as he pulled himself forward, still cradling whatever he had stolen. His paw clawed at the sidewalk, trying its best to reach the next slab; Judy did not let him get there.

She hadn't meant to be so rough, but the thrill of the chase flowed through her veins. The young boy squealed as she grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to his feet. The fall had blackened his eye, and the bruise was already taking shape. He whimpered a bit as she let loose her glare. Instinctively, his forelimb closed around the package.

"What is that, young man?" Demanding, authoritative: it was just like they taught in the academy. Mild protests and squirming from the lynx only tightened her grip and steeled her glare. One resigned sigh later, he let go.

The fresh-baked loaf of bread landed with a dull thud.

"Wha…." Judy still clenched the nape of his neck, but her eyes fell with the bread. The loaf split upon landing. Crumbs tumbled unchecked back down the street.

"I…I just wanted to feed Mom…." It could have been a lie. But, her ears clearly picked up the sounds of his stomach rumbling through the tattered gingham shirt, with threads hanging over raggedy cargo pants. He was a hungry young man, no doubt. Yet… _why this street?_

Judy relinquished her grip on the lynx's neck, but she kept a paw firmly planted on his shoulder as she scanned the buildings above and around her. Gone were the shiny storefronts and polished facades where the chase had begun, replaced by crumbling buildings with spider-web-cracked windows. Shouts rang out from those remnants of windows; they were angry and tired shouts. The sun felt hotter here, and her uniform was suddenly stifling.

She returned her attention to the lynx. "What's your name?"

She got a sniffle out of him.

_A new tactic might help loosen his tongue_ , she thought. "Mine's Judy." She tapped her chest with her free paw.

"…Martin." It was a shy and shaky voice.

"Okay, Martin. There's no need to be scared." She wore a smile that wavered as she breathed deeply — it was taking a while to recover from her exceptionally long run. "Now, can you tell me where your house is?"

Martin gulped. Judy felt his shoulder roll as he pointed toward the building at the end of the block. "So close…."

With the heat of the chase dissipating, Judy slowly recalled Martin's heavier-than-expected footfalls. She peeked down toward his hind limbs and caught the glint of a thin metallic object; his fall had jostled it out from between his clenched toes. Its copper edge was ragged, more so than Martin's clothing, but there was a deliberate pattern to it. It was fit for a lock, like a deadbolt on a house's front door.

The tarnished copper key lying next to the split loaf of bread finally convinced Judy to withdraw her paw. Martin teetered on unsure feet, eyes wet with barely-dammed tears. He sniffled a few more times while Judy's mind dove into a quagmire. A criminal caught in the act of shoplifting stood before her. A hungry kid wanting to feed his family stood before her. She examined the bread. The golden crust was busted, exposing the soft innards to the dingy downtown air.

She stepped forward and lowered her voice, barely above a whisper. "Take it and go. And  _don't_  let me catch you doing this again, you hear me?"

His eyes started streaming as he nodded. Sniffling became louder and more pronounced as he scooped up the loaf and trundled awkwardly down the sidewalk, pausing every few steps to look back at Judy. She shooed him along with an impatient paw. The kid had reached his stoop when she heard the car peeling up beside her.

"Huh, ya let 'em go. Smart money would've been on you arresting him," Nick thoughtfully opined as he hopped out of the parked police cruiser.

Judy smirked at the comment, but she otherwise kept silent. Instead, she listened to the street. She heard the anger and the exhaustion that lingered between buildings. A despondency polluted the very air that she inhaled deeply, and it only exhausted her as well.

"C'mon, Nick, let's go back and talk to that shop owner."

"No need. Took care of that for ya. Nice man, once you get past the screeching."

Judy blinked in actual surprise. "How did you know that—"

"That it was a kid? Yeah, it didn't look like a professional job…not that I would know." He gave a beguiling smirk that tried, laughably so, to hide his dodge. "So, I took the liberty of patching things up with the shop owner; we're good to go on that end. I'll leave the paperwork to you, though…fair trade, I think."

Her forelimb immediately cramped when "paperwork" left Nick's mouth. She imagined the stacks of forms and certainly did not relish the thought. In an effort to buy some time from the cold steel of her desk and the incessant scribblings to fill every box on every form, she floated an idea. "Hey, so, since we're out on the town already...how about we grab a snack or something?"

"And take a break from our  _work_? Oh, you know me too well, Hopps."

There was a spring in her step as she headed back toward their car. "Wonderful! I know this little place with a  _great_ —"A crunch sounded underfoot. She pulled away to find the twisted corpse of blue-tinted aviators. Judy gently lifted them from the ground. With her head lowered, she groveled. "Nick, I…I broke them, I'm so sorry."

"Broke what?" asked Nick as he slid across the hood of the car and leaped back into the driver's seat.

She languidly poured herself into the passenger seat and shut the door. Her paws extended, and the pallbearer offered the mangled remains to her partner. "Your favorite pair…."

She deposited the frames into Nick's lap, then waited for what was to come next. She braced for whatever bitter invectives Nick would conjure to express his fury; she thought that they would be well-deserved ones. She had been entrusted with something precious, and Judy had shattered that trust when she had shattered those blue lenses.

Instead, Judy received, "Hmm? Oh,  _those_. Yeah, I have three more just like 'em sitting on my nightstand."

Judy's invectives didn't make it over the roar of the engine.

#


	3. Chapter 2: Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're confused when you begin reading this: Chapter 2: Part II was when I decided to break out the Parts into their own individual chapters. I think it makes for smoother reading, but please let me know what you think. Thanks, and enjoy! - Euphonemes

_Run_

"To start? How about coffee for the both of us?"

The aproned coati craned her neck back toward the kitchen and belted out Nick's order. The four or five other patrons barely noticed, their various snouts and noses buried in their own business. The coati — Karen, Judy thought her name was — headed to her next table, her feet clicking on chintzy checkered tile.

Judy peeled her back off of the vinyl-coated booth seat and flipped open the laminated menu. Adrenaline from her encounter with Martin had finally passed, leaving behind a weary officer with an imminent headache. She and Nick had been directed to the seat with the self-proclaimed best view of the city — if it could be called a view. They were treated to the underbellies of the big gleaming towers, the pieces typically stashed out of sight for the vast majority of Zootopia's citizens. Judy rather liked it.

Though, by necessity, such a view required windows. In this case, the long and wide windows along the front of the rather secluded diner allowed a great amount of sunlight to bathe Judy and Nick where they sat, which was not helpful in her efforts to stave off the headache.

Nick wasn't much help, either. "Sheesh, is it bright in here. You should've picked a place with fewer windows. I can barely read this menu, so much glare..."

She huffed as she perused the menu. A futile exercise, really, as she already knew exactly what she wanted. Yet, the act of searching created a significant distraction from the resurgent pain...and from the picture of the wide-eyed and starved lynx as he dropped his stolen loaf of bread. In between the items on the menu, Judy saw the scared kid standing steps from home in a terrifying town, his paws shaking as he sputtered out his name.

"Hey,  _Judy!_ "

The shock of Nick's choice of moniker brought her back to the booth. "Wha…?" she inquired dazedly.

"Your turn to order, partner."

Judy looked up to discover Karen tapping her foot, delaying as patiently as a member of a harried wait staff could manage. Bashfully, Judy shuffled around her menu, humming as she pretended to consider some of the other options. She tapped a paw on the edge of the mug that Karen had placed directly in front of her. Coffee was Nick's idea; it was kind, but she wasn't in the mood for it. After an appropriately long amount of time, enough to elicit a strange clicking sound from their server and a noisy slurp from her partner, she ordered.

"Uh…carrot stew, please."

Karen grunted while scribbling on her check pad. Her face half-covered by the menu, Judy watched as Nick's eyes condensed into slivers of pure condescension. She knew what lay behind them, what churned in Nick's mind while Karen plucked the laminated curtain from Judy's hands and then pivoted back to screech the order at the kitchen.

Once Karen moved on to the next batch of customers two tables away, Nick began. "So that's why we're here?"

Judy immediately answered, though her thoughts sped past her words. "Yeah, they have the best…carrot stew."

Despite her hedonistic enjoyment of carrots the evening prior, Judy could not shake the urge to down some more. It was likely the consequence of being raised alongside the vegetable, watching little sprouts mature into the best specimens Bunnyburrow could offer, year after year. As she had grown, so had the carrots — well, a new group of them, but carrots all the same. For Judy, the orange tuber elicited a nostalgia that simultaneously set her stomach rumbling.

Nick, however, did not seem to share that sentiment. He let out a wry laugh. " _More_  carrots? Already? You  _are_ a trooper, Carrots."

"You know I grew up around it, Nick!" Judy worked to explain a truth she had laid plain many times before. She knew that Nick wasn't serious, yet that same fuzzy nostalgia for Bunnyburrow's fallow fields and rows of planted seeds would harden into a shield to bash anyone who challenged her particular tastes.  _A funny quirk_ , Judy thought, as Nick simply laughed louder.

The diner's patrons still did not take notice of the odd pair in the booth. Nick's laugh bounced off the cheap flooring and landed somewhere near the kitchen window, where one of their two plates now rested. Nick was suddenly quieter, more pensive, as he leaned over the table. "Y'know, you seem…I dunno,  _jumpier_  than usual, partner. Little more tired, maybe. What's going on?"

Judy had no clue what Nick had selected for his entrée, but she knew right away that the dish in the kitchen window was meant for her. Steam was curling away from the dish of carrot stew seated atop a white saucer tanned by innumerable spilled meals. Far-off wisps of deliciousness held her in rapt and closed-eyed attention, and she was unable to answer Nick the first time he asked.

It took another few attempts. "Hey, partner, over here!" She most certainly was distracted, by a great many things, doubtlessly so. Yet, as her eyes opened and then dawdled over to Nick's, Judy suddenly grew apprehensive. She was fearful, it seemed, of what Nick would say should she choose to give voice to her concerns.

Eager to rid herself of the unpleasant feelings, she breathed deeply. Unexpectedly, the heady scent of carrot stew rushed to greet her. She looked down at the bowl that had almost magically appeared on the table, and she barely restrained her squeal. She gave a passing glance at Nick's choice: some motley collection of something or other that could in no honest fashion compete with the splendor of the stew now amassing on her dunked spoon.

She continued to ignore Nick's probes as she dutifully went to work on the stew. Every bite was better than the one before, irresistible flavors and spices coming together in this epicurean delight. The location may not have been scenic — and the atmosphere was surely lacking — but this stew served as her greatest reminder of home, a diamond in this very rough terrain.

"Oh, almost forgot…" Karen said while unceremoniously dropping a plate onto the center of the table. It landed somewhere out of frame for Judy, whose attention was focused solely upon the stew. It wasn't until the crumb rolled into her lap that she ceased her shoveling.

The spoon, now weighing several tons in her paw, clattered to the bottom of the almost-empty bowl as Judy slowly, painfully, dragged her eyes over to the center plate, upon which sat an unspoiled hemispherical loaf of bread with a crease running through the golden crust to allow sultry steam to escape the freshly baked loaf. A few crumbs had risen with the steam and were now scattered across the tabletop. Judy found herself frozen.

"It was the kid, wasn't it?"

"…huh?" That was the smartest sound Judy could make.

Nick plowed ahead, even as Judy remained transfixed on the yeasty morsels. "There always have been poor kids, Hopps. And there will always be poor kids. Ones that need to steal bread to survive. You can't worry about all of 'em."

A flash of anger, brighter and hotter than the sun streaming through the large windows, overtook the lavender in her eyes, which she then snapped to Nick. "Why not!" It was indignant, rash, unbecoming of an officer. Yet…it felt  _right_ , proper in some indescribable sense. A tingling struck up underneath the strands of her gray fur.

Nick appeared unmoved as he continued digging into his glop. "Not our job, Hopps. We serve and protect everyone. We can't pick favorites."

"But then we just end up helping  _no one!_ " Her furry fists slammed down on the tabletop. Ripples cascaded on the surface of what little stew remained. Patrons did angle their heads back or around slightly, enough to illustrate a passing interest in the happenings at the noisy table by the big windows.

The tingling had subsided, replaced by a hollowness centered in the pit of her stomach, a hole the carrot stew refused to fill. Martin's trembling rolled up her forelimb. His tears dampened her gray fur. He was a thief; he was a child. And he was alone with the angry shouts and dilapidated buildings.

"Partner, we've gotten a lot done together. Helped a lot of people. Maybe try not being so dismissive of our work?" He took another loud slurp from his mug, and the steam curled the tips of the fur around his lips, the same lips that hid the beginnings of his snarky smile.

Judy stopped it cold. "But our  _work_ …everything with the Night Howler. All that we worked to change. It accomplished  _nothing_! It didn't matter!"

"It mattered to the ones we helped." Nick was suddenly serious — an unpleasant look for him, or so Judy believed as she stirred the coffee she did not want. With so little left in the crock, her stew had chilled; it was still tasty, but nowhere near as scrumptious as when she began.

"I get it, Nick, I do…" Judy backtracked. She was glad to have been of assistance, to see the smiles and hear the sighs of relief whenever she could. Even the many dismayed rants of illegal parkers had failed to diminish the sincere thanks of someone in great need. "But we're just scratching the surface. You, me, Bogo, Clawhauser,  _everyone_ , we're not  _really_  changing anything."

"Did you expect us to be changing things?" Nick leaned back in the booth, forelimbs stretching out along the top of the backrest. "Ridding society of all its woes?"

Judy stumbled as she abruptly needed to give voice to the concerns that had dug the pit in her stomach. Nick squinted, perhaps to keep the bright sun from totally blinding him — or to express a smoldering inquisitiveness. "Well…" she stuttered, "I-I mean, after the Night Howler stuff, I thought…I figured…."

"What, you think what we did would have  _changed_  everything overnight? Curing corruption and blight, clearing out the old for the bright and shiny tomorrow right around the corner? Even in Bunnyburrow, that wouldn't be true, so I know you know it." Nick rolled his shoulders, readying himself to deliver something educational...or something patronizing, Judy could never tell. He lowered the volume of his voice, and Judy's ears whipped forward to catch every drop of sound. "The whole thing, it's a tough system. I grew up in it, and I've told you the stories. Ever since I was little — younger than that lynx — I've seen what it does, how it works. The change that you're talking about… _changing the system_ …it's slow, if it ever comes at all to a neighborhood like that."

Judy actually tried to dig her heels into the cheap floor tiles. Instead, her short legs swung limply. "B-but we—"

"We are agents of that system, my dearly idealistic partner. We do as we are commanded. Serve and protect. Surface-level stuff, as you'd put it. Doesn't mean we don't care, Hopps. But there's only so much we can do from where we're sitting."

Judy sighed as the wind let out of her flagging sails. Her feet quit swinging. The carrot stew had thickened in the interim; her spoon was trapped in a jelly of unfinished delicacy. Her paws collapsed onto the table. A motionless Judy again felt the exhaustion of the city drain her energy, sap her strength. She surrendered to it, and her heavy head joined her hands on the tabletop. A loose crumb rolled into the short gray fur that lined the outer rim of her floppy ears.

She felt Nick calmly brush it aside. A tickling sensation made her ear twitch. "Although…" Nick posited with the tone he usually took when he had a hard sell of an idea for his partner. "Were we sitting from a different point of view…say, City Hall? Maybe it'd be different."

Judy probably should not have been so shocked to hear Nick say it. In fact a small part of her, one kept hushed by the pains and trials of the morning, had expected it. He had said nothing during her languid crawl to her desk earlier today — a blessing, though she wouldn't say so to his face. Perhaps now, Nick was being nice. More likely, he was simply being opportunistic. Her barriers had weakened, and the chance had arisen. Nick would not be liable to let it go.

And yet... _maybe Emmitt is right_. Thoughts buried beneath a morning migraine rapidly rose to the surface once more. The Otterton party materialized around her, the booth transforming into a stool, the tabletop into a counter replete with soufflé and purée, the clanking of diner patrons' utensils into the rumbling din of ebullient partygoers in another room.  _There are a great number of us, Judy, we who are grateful for what you've done. You'd find a lot of support._

Head raised and mouth agape, Judy pondered, and then admitted she had nothing. "...Nick, I…."

He cracked a sly smile. "C'mon, I  _know_  you've been thinking about it."

_How perceptive_ , Judy surmised as she drained the entirety of her unwanted coffee cup, the (half-caff, which Nick had remembered when ordering) brown liquid having fallen to room temperature. It was tepid, with a few loose grounds bobbing on the surface...and it had been a move to buy time more than anything else. Nick's stare remained unbroken, even as the empty mug clattered back onto its saucer. "You've been waiting all morning to say something, haven't you Nick?"  _An opportunist at heart…some things never change_.

Sharp teeth glinted in the warm sunlight. They flashed as the sly smile spread across his face. He didn't need to say anything, as Judy knew already.

"Nick, being a mayor, it has to be hard work. Running a city this big? And having everyone mad at you all the time for something. I mean, I got a  _taste_  of that during the Night Howler stuff, and that was…tough. I just, I don't think I'd be  _ready_  for it."

Nick was quick with his response. "Okay, maybe you're not ready for it yet. But you still want to do it then. You  _could_  do it, couldn't you?" Obviously, Nick had been thinking about this a great deal, much to Judy's chagrin. She hated the sense of being caught off-guard, unprepared for the eventuality of Nick raising this point again. She had tossed and turned the thought over during a long night but reached no conclusions of substance — certainly nowhere close to what Nick sounded ready to present.

"Look, partner," Nick went on, "not saying it'd be easy. We'd have…well, a  _lot_  of work to do with you." She crinkled her nose, but Nick was unperturbed. "Make a face all you want, but you're right. You need some practice. Interviewing, speech-making, shaking hands and kissing babies. But that stuff, that's easy." He leaned in, casting his snout's shadow over the spilled bread and frozen stew. His shimmering green eyes, like verdant Bunnyburrow summers, were gentle yet resolute. "Now  _I_ know you can do it. So the hard part, the  _really_  hard part, is convincing  _yourself_  you want to do this. That you  _could_  do this…and I'm willing to bet you're nearly over that hump."

He settled back in the booth and took a long and loud drag from the coffee mug — Karen must have refreshed Nick's drink at some point. Judy studied her partner. The baking sun, filtered through a large window and the air of the city, set aflame the colors of his fur. He glowed in the belief of his cause. He sat tight-lipped now, his snout twitching with something unspoken, barely held back by a mind that was set purposefully to task. For a few moments, Judy watched in his green eyes the sway of the branches and leaves topping the vanguard trees that once encircled her Bunnyburrow home. She again sniffed at the clean wind blowing across fallow fields. The tender taste of fresh carrots dallied on her tongue. She enjoyed this spontaneous serenity…which was broken apart by Nick's hoarse cough.

"Sorry…it's just, Nick, I…."

"You'd be  _great_  at it, partner. This city would be lucky to have you. And all of them out there, they know that, too. They're  _waiting_ for you to take it."

Judy blushed; Nick's compliments were unexpected, though nonetheless appreciated. His words carried an air of certainty as he undoubtedly awaited her thoughts. His attitude was frustrating, but his words and thoughts were compelling. Passion ignited in her eyes like tiny flames as Nick stared at her, and then the window, and then whatever he was eating.

Almost absentmindedly, Nick prattled on. "And if you don't believe me, ask around! Telling ya, it's true. Hey, Karen…Karen! Come here please — got a question for you!"

"…yeah, ask around…" Judy mumbled into her stew. Nick's opinion did matter to her, as did many others in her city. Karen made a fine example, though it was unlikely that their server would spare a passing thought or two for their table. Yet, she needed someone to challenge this view. She wanted someone to really push her and to tell her why she would be bad for it.  _Ask around_. And the tiny flames flared.

She thought she heard the clicking of Karen's feet on the tile, but beyond that, Judy was gone. Engrossed in her plan, she put her phone to work. Emails and text messages flew by as she cashed in a favor here and there to get what she wanted. In a flash, she had obtained the right permissions and found an agreeable time for a very special meeting; it would be sooner than she would've preferred, but it would be the meeting she wanted. Unfortunately, it meant that she would have to pass on the rest of the stew — hopefully, Nick wasn't too averse to covering her bill this time.

"Ok-thanks-Nick-gotta-go-bye!"

And Judy Hopps was a blur as she leaped from the booth and scurried out the door. She wanted to explain her plan, though he would figure it out soon enough. The look of hers had probably given it away. And Nick's voice did warble somewhere behind her, but there was no time to worry about it.

She had a train to catch.


	4. Chapter 2: Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last Part of Chapter 2. This piece gets a little intense, chiefly because of who Judy talks to. There's a lot of emotions swirling around this Part, and it ends up driving Judy toward her ultimate decision. I hope you enjoy seeing this unfold!

_Run_

"Please remove all loose articles of clothing, jewelry, weapons, and any other metallic objects. That includes the badge, Officer." A surly corrections officer — a flat-toned rhinoceros who showed infinitesimal interest in Judy — plunked down the plastic tub and scooted it through the narrow window that separated the cramped check-in booth from the prison's visitor waiting room. Judy did as she was instructed, removing her glinting golden ZPD badge with a mild reluctance that made her eyelid flutter. Second thoughts were mounting in her mind, future regrets already building from nothing.

As the rhinoceros took possession of the bin, Judy earnestly wondered if she should have heeded Nick's protests. As expected, he had figured out her plan. A little unexpectedly, he had chased her out of the diner and halfway down the street before his huffing and puffing fell away to the sounds of the city. The much better conditioned Judy made quick work of the remaining distance to the only train stop in Zootopia that would take her to the maximum-security facility in which she now stood. An anxious paw fiddled with the patch of her uniform discolored slightly by its usual golden adornment.

"The inmate is ready now. Robinson! Show the officer to the interview room."

The thick steel door next to the check-in booth swung away, pulled from its berth by a massive black jaguar whose bulging muscles shimmered under a cloak of jet black fur. Unintentionally, Judy gasped as the gatekeeper — Robinson, likely — beckoned to her with a paw that would've been too big for her deep bowl of carrot stew. Her first steps were slight and slow as she crossed the threshold, but she did regain a tiny bit of bounce while following Robinson down a starkly white cinder-block corridor.

Judy tried to be polite and asked Robinson a few small talk questions. His brooding silence confirmed that Robinson was not one for small talk. With a sigh, Judy resigned herself to ruminating on Nick's pleas as she had taken flight from the diner.  _This won't help anything! It's crazy — don't bother with him! You're making a mistake! Hopps! Carrots! Judy! Get back here!_

_Too late to listen now_ , Judy thought as Robison wheeled around on his thick legs and took hold of an iron door handle. "The inmate will be chained to the table," he said in a melodious and terrifying bass. "Take your seat on the opposite side of the inmate. You will have five minutes to conduct your business. Do not approach the inmate. Do not hand anything to the inmate. There will be two armed guards posted in the room. They will monitor your conversation. Any attempts to interact with the inmate outside of speaking will be dealt with summarily. Understood?"

A big gulp, and then Judy nodded.

The door swung open. Robinson's massive paw nearly shoved her inside.

"Ah, Hopps. How good of you to join me. Please, come in. Sit down."

Instantly, regret frothed. Judy would have happily leaped right back through the doorway had Robinson not sealed her in. The walls were the same starkly white cinder blocks as the corridor. The even white color was broken only by the two guards armed to the teeth and bedecked in black riot gear. They guarded a gray covering — the door to the prison itself. No windows were cut into the wall; only the buzzing fluorescent bulbs hanging overhead offered light, and it was a depressing light that shone with pretended brilliance when it deflected off the burnished steel table and two steel chairs.

One of those chairs was already occupied. Judy studied its occupant as she traversed the chilly floor. She remembered him as being taller, though perhaps his slouch in the chair robbed him of a few inches. Once-pristine fur was now matted, dirtied by the events of a life he probably did not expect to be leading. Judy recalled the court document and his claim that he would be released in "no time at all," once the whole mess was cleared up. That had not turned out to be the case.

Judy settled into her tough and unforgiving chair. She had been totally surprised he had accepted this meeting. Even though others surely had been to blame, it was Judy who most publicly wore the mantle of ouster. She had toppled a dynasty in a maneuver that the inmate would never forget.

"Mr. Lionheart. The pleasure is with me." She had held the  _m_  sound for too long. His former title had been automatic, and it had risen and stuck in her throat. She had paused for a moment to correct the moniker. Lionheart had noticed.

He chuckled, airy and political yet weightier and more burdened than before. "Sometimes my cellmates call me  _Mayor_. They think it gets under my skin, trying to rile me up. They're wrong, naturally."

Lionheart's laugh was not the only anemic thing about him. Judy squinted in the ugly light. The mats of fur, composed of thousands of gritty strands, sheened with an oily rainbow. His mane had diminished, frazzled and frayed, unkempt and unfit for the consummate politician. His tail swished lazily, haphazardly, between the legs of the steel chair. His eyes, though, they still burned with an unquenchable fire. Hot was his stare as Judy sat stoically — a mask for her fluttering heart.

"I will be honest, sir. I didn't think you'd accept my request to meet."

The fire flickered as he quickly blinked a few times. "These days, Hopps, I don't get many visitors. Once your title is taken away, and your accolades stripped, suddenly you're not worth much to anyone."

A strange feeling — guilt — leached into her gut. At their first meeting in City Hall, Judy had failed to hide the intimidation and the fear that the overpowering Lionheart could create. He had seemed so sure, so popular. Now, this pitiable creature, alone, slouched in his chair somehow brought forth an emotion that stung worse and lingered longer any burst of fear.

"Sir, what… _happened_  between us…when…."

"When you ruined my well thought-out plan to protect the citizens of Zootopia? When you cost me my career — my pride!" Hot was his breath as the iron chains clanked, the only restraint preventing glittering canines from tearing apart rabbit flesh. The guards by the door shifted noisily, intent on the inmate hearing their weapons clack. Lionheart growled barbarically, so unbecoming of a former mayor. After the guards advanced half a foot, Judy took a peek and wondered if the riot gear they wore were more of a navy blue. That blended better with the surrounding environment, for some reason.

But, she would not get a closer inspection of their gear. Lionheart returned to his seat, the chains sighing back toward the concrete floor. "…no, you were not the only one. Others would've had their chances. And  _I_  certainly did myself no favors. I think time in this place has started to show me that."

To be sure, Judy was taken aback by the sudden meekness overtaking Lionheart. Yet, it was peaceful, in some small measure. "I really didn't mean to, it's just…."

"How it all happened, yes, I know." Golden paws rubbed shackled wrists. "But, I don't think you are here to commiserate on my past, Hopps, so let's leave it alone for now." Lionheart seemed to grow a mite taller, prouder. "I  _am_  curious, though…what  _does_  bring you to this fine establishment?"

Judy gulped as the old Lionheart peeked through the grimy husk. She had been prepared to deliver her purpose immediately, to subject her sudden mayoral desires to the hideous and critical light in this room. Yet, as she stared into the inmate's eyes, smoldering with a dormant conviction, she uncharacteristically found herself tongue-tied.

"I…uh…am here to, to find out more about our new mayor!"  _No! C'mon Judy, stupid, very stupid._

She was certain Lionheart didn't buy it. He sniffed loudly, contemptuously. "Lobos? What about him?" He played along.

"Well, I…want to know more about him. Who is he, exactly? He just sprang up from nowhere, and I — I have to know. It's…important."

He cocked a quizzical eyebrow. "You came all this way to talk to  _me_  about my  _replacement_?" The chains rattled with his attempt at standing. "Guard! We're done here!"

The two by the gray portal scooted forward. Judy frantically waved them off. "No! No please, sir, please! Just a few questions. Please."

At some point, the air conditioning had started. Her uniform, even without her badge, remained stifling, as it had all day. Hot was the street where the young lynx had pled for food. She watched the inmate's golden fur shuffle in the stale wind. She doubted he had ever missed a meal.

Lionheart reclaimed his seat and settled down. The guards resumed their stances. The ugly lights bore down all the same.

"Lobos," the inmate growled, "he's a character. A university professor, his career before politics. Still is his career, I suppose. Studies ancient cultures, I think, something about the psychology or whatever. He's a sharp guy, interesting, enthralling maybe. His students loved him, booked those classrooms solid whenever he taught."

"And so he gave that up to be in City Hall?"

It was an uncomfortable question for Lionheart, or so it seemed. His chair creaked, whined metallically as he pulled back from his inquisitor. "Fell into it, if I remember right. A spot opened up as an advisor when we did some rezoning for some sections of Zootopia. Had to protect the old buildings, historical sites, I dunno, I didn't read his reports. From there, he…rose through the ranks."

Judy caught the twitch of Lionheart's snout. Perhaps he was out of practice, trapped here between pristine white walls, but his mendacity was not up to par for such a successfully crooked politician. "Rose through the ranks? There's more to it than  _that_ , isn't there?"

Lionheart delivered a defiant glare...or, maybe it was more defensive, hiding something. "Why do you care, Hopps?" His breath reeked of a buried and rotten truth.

Judy stared back. The lynx cried, called for home. Steam from fresh bread curled away into the muggy afternoon air. Shouts echoed between broken buildings. They fueled the fire burning behind lavender irises.

And her glare won out. Lionheart sighed and broke away. "Fine…." She watched his matted mane swing around in the trickle of wind. "Fine then. Answer this question for me, Hopps: Who runs our city?"

Mild surprise made her gasp. It was a simple question, really, which should have had a simple answer. Yet, Lionheart's shifting figure, nervous about the conversation to come, had Judy thinking otherwise. She sat quietly and played with her paws.

"That's what I thought." For a moment, Lionheart sounded proud again. The source of that pride, however, baffled Judy as he talked on. "Because it was never  _me_. The mayor runs nothing. I looked the part —that was the job. But real decisions, they come from somewhere else."

"Who!" Judy demanded. The immediacy of her response jolted Lionheart's eyes wide open in what seemed to be authentic shock. And she wondered if he would actually provide a real answer.

He didn't. "Oh, not a chance, my dear. If I talk that much, I'm carrion."

At that very instant, Judy dearly wished that Nick were in the room. Judy could smell dishonesty — a prerequisite for her career. But Nick's sense was altogether different. It was special in a way, informed by years of haggling, hustling, swindling. He possessed a frightening ability to extract truth from just about anyone he faced. This type of double-talk and lying was outside of Judy's realm, though she hated admitting that.

Perhaps Lionheart knew that, for he seemed to take pity on the officer. "Tell ya what, Hopps, I'll put it this way. The Mammal Inclusion Initiative, the one that let you onto the police force… do you really think it was my idea? I may have been the handsome face for it, but that's where my role ended. They decided when it began, what it would look like. I mean, there's a good chance they had already picked you out before you ever applied. It was their  _beneficence_ that gave you your badge."

Lionheart snorted. It was a tired sound, proper for these tired white walls. His face drooped as his long breath expelled some measure of his soul. "No, it's someone else who put me in charge. And who put Lobos in charge after me. Whatever they do, Hopps, there's a very good reason for it."

A soft silence descended onto the table. Even the buzz of the fluorescent suns above fell away to the stillness. The scent of a latent fear, one carefully guarded but present all the same, lingered around Lionheart; Judy could sniff it out. She almost had to grab her cheeks to stop the cringe. Whoever, or whatever, could instill such…  _obedience_ …from a creature as once-powerful as Lionheart, however, deserved respect. Judy decided to tread lightly. "But Lobos seems like a strange choice."

The former mayor of Zootopia managed a dingy smirk. "Oh Hopps, perhaps it seems strange to you. But they don't choose quickly — or poorly. Look at me, right?" His comment was a tad too wry for Judy's taste. Lionheart shrugged. "Hmph, fine. But Arturo Lobos, see, he may be a crony...but he's no fool, Hopps. He's smarter than everyone expects him to be. He's got a real knack for politicking, and he somehow gets people to like him in the process. If you're poking around on him, it'd be prudent of you to remember all that."

His steel chair groaned as he leaned away from Judy and offered some space to ponder the gravity of his words. Putting aside the casual revelation that her career could have begun on the whim of these mysterious individuals, Judy's mind went to work. Processing would take time, time preferably spent outside this windowless box. And Nick would probably have a few tidbits and opinions of his own to throw into the mix. But, she wanted to be sharp right now in this room...and to get her answers.

His chair squeaked, and suddenly Lionheart had reentered her space. It blunted her senses more than she expected. "But what I'm still trying to figure out, Hopps, is why you care so much. This is all so far outside the purview of ZPD. I can't imagine this to be relevant to a case or investigation. So what could you want...with...hmm…."

While Lionheart squinted and hummed, Judy recalled with great clarity the actual reason she had pursued this meeting. She hadn't planned to broach this subject in this manner, but a small part of her was relieved that Lionheart would puzzle his way to what she was truly there to ask. It would almost make it an easier pitch, and letting him get to the answer himself might make him a tad more cooperative in providing useful feedback.

And with impressive speed, understanding brought the cheeky grin to Lionheart's face. "No, surely not. I thought being an  _officer of the law_  was your  _dream_?"

She didn't care much for his mocking tone. Many things in her life had been open to ridicule. Her profession was not among those. Still, she clung to her composure. "Helping people is my dream. Whatever that looks like, it's what I have to do."

That seemed to appease Lionheart — or perhaps amuse him. He gave Judy back her space and muttered quietly for a few moments before barking out, "Admirable…but your  _spirit_  alone would not be enough. What makes you think you have the mettle for it? The stomach to do what is necessary?"

And that was the very question Judy was hoping to answer. Lionheart likely had his thoughts on the matter already gathered; the smug smirk telegraphed that. Lights buzzed overhead, and they were louder than before but made their noise with an eerie harmony. A chord, beautiful in its own way, came together in this terrible place.

"My job, Mr. Lionheart, requires me to see some of the worst our city has to offer. The best, too, do not mistake me, there is good out there. But not everyone gets to see that goodness. They're trapped, maybe by themselves, maybe by the system in which they live and work and play and love. And as long as I wear my badge and speak my oath, I cannot live with myself knowing that I could've  _done_  something to make it even just a bit better for them. To show them goodness. I've never given up before. I won't start now."

The light bulbs had found their song, and they sang with pride as the table remained still. Her lavender irises steeled with a conviction that would send Nick scampering away, for he knew what the gaze meant. She watched as Lionheart sat motionless with his mouth open just a smidgen. It rose inside her, the feeling she had been seeking. Her articulacy had been a little surprising, but her words had been true. And Nick had been right…she had nearly been over the hump.

And Lionheart shoved her back down.

Hot were her cheeks as Lionheart guffawed with a rude sound that carried well in this ugly room. It drowned out the tune of the lights with extreme prejudice.

Between snorts, he delivered his brief excoriation. "And you think being mayor will let you fix what, the system? To show people  _goodness_?" His next round of laughing was hoarser and meaner. Eventually, he settled down enough to speak. "Ah, your idealism is refreshing after so long in this place. But no, Hopps, it will not happen that way. They will never let it happen. You do not have the iron will to face this, despite your persistence in your chosen line of work. They will devour you, my dear."

Her fur prickled at the cruelty of Lionheart's pathetic diatribe.  _Too much time alone_ , Judy figured. Yet, what he said held a sway over her. No matter the lunacy of listening to a washed-up has-been currently chained to a prison table, she could not root out the doubt Lionheart had planted. The sweet taste of carrots inexplicably dallied on her tongue as she tried to compile some decent response.

But he did not let up. "Oh, my, well you know, I will give credit where it is due, Hopps. You have the face for the job. The body to boot, too. Indeed, you are  _cute_ , little girl…."

Carrots faded away, and bitterness sunk in. If this were a ploy to get her riled up, it was working. And were Nick seated next to her, she knew he'd advise her to back off, to walk out the door and leave this filth to rot in his cell. Alas, Nick was nowhere to be found.

Her head buzzed with a single phrase, and it took every ounce of willpower she had to keep it locked inside.

_Don't you say it again._

"…but being  _cute_  isn't going to win you any elections!"

_You said it again._

Her steel chair growled as it slid away from the table. The prison guards could tell what was boiling within her, and they shuffled nervously as Judy landed on clenched toes.

She turned away.

And Lionheart's chains sighed as they chased her footsteps toward the door. "Ah, Hopps, leaving so soon?"

Judy delivered three strikes on the door, and the latch clicked as Robinson swung open the portal. She stopped and cast a lavender iris over her shoulder. And it was steeled, resolute, and harmonious.

"Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Lionheart. I have everything I need now."

#


	5. Chapter 3: Part I

_Run_

For the fifth time, the phone rang. And for the fifth time, she ignored it.

Eventually, she would need to tell them. Between their gasps of surprise, she would need to lay out the plan that had engrossed her during her train ride back to the city, her walk back to her cramped apartment, and her evening taken back from sleep. Lionheart's sneer still echoed in her weary mind as she sat at her secondhand desk and doodled on the fortieth or fiftieth piece of paper.

Her phone whistled in a familiar three-toned warble as her parents left their voicemail. She had already neglected to respond to them for several days, and once the recent excitement had absconded with her attention...she was busy, sure, and her parents understood, but that was a poor excuse.

The moon hid this evening, leaving only the soft azure glow of the nearby neon signs to bathe her space. The desk lamp shone brilliantly, pouring out an amber pool onto her desk, submerging the outlines of so many thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Judy grumbled as she carelessly flipped through three crumpled notebook pages. Ragged tears ran down the side of each as marks of failure.

The steeled resolve hung on in her lavender eyes, but it was sealed beneath the toughened glaze of exhaustion and doubt. The pencil scratched and then crunched as the lead fractured.

Judy sighed.

Her last pencil worn to its end, she leaned back in her creaking chair and surveyed her workspace. Smudged notes written in a furious hand were scattered about. Partially erased plans, abandoned for a variety of reasons, littered her normally austere desktop. Papers were filled with muddled musings, with most of them meant to combat Lionheart's cruel laugh trapped in a windowless box. And they were all perfectly unhelpful in figuring out how to run for mayor.

The inferno that had burst into existence as she stepped away from Lionheart's table had been raging until this moment. Fuel spent, it wound down to embers, smoldering silently in the late night — or was it early morning? Judy peered out her window to a city always awake and found no answer. She yawned, and the chair creaked as she rested her head on her desk.

Though her mind was weary, she still picked up the loud sound at her door. Was it a thunderclap? Whatever it was banged on the door again. They were explosions! Once more, the sound was at her door, and then Judy recognized a paw slamming on the flimsy wood. His voice sliced right through it. "C'mon Carrots, open the door."

"Wha…time…" she murmured. Paws waggled about the desk, seeking out the simple alarm clock that was sitting clear across the other side of the room. Frustrated and trapped in her sleepy state, she quit her futile search and slithered from her chair. The floor squeaked as she trundled to her door and snapped the lock.

The door nearly smacked her in the nose as Nick barged through the entryway. "Oh, how  _good_  of you to let me in. Wasn't like I hadn't heard from you since lunch or anything. Nothing to worry about."

Sleep that she had almost started still clung to her mind. "Uh…what do you…mean?"

"Check your phone, Hopps."

She scrabbled back to her desk and woke her phone. Notifications flitted across the enlivened screen. As expected, a voicemail from her parents sat in her inbox. But, she had not expected the four others, all from Nick.

Dawn was breaking over her senses, even as it remained eerily blue outside. She gurgled as she realized she had totally forgotten Nick while conducting her day's business. He had not been happy when he had to watch her run away those many hours ago. Perhaps he was even — no, it was likely he was upset that she had disappeared. His tone here in her apartment made that evident, though his mere presence at this hour also spelled it out rather plainly. "I…sorry." That was honestly all she could muster.

Maybe Nick saw the bags under her eyes and took pity. Everything about him softened (even if his words were a little mean). "Wow, ya look rough…and I mean that as nicely as I can."

Somehow, that roused Judy enough to deliver a half-measure of a response. "Yeah, well, you're not so…good looking yourself, sir." Her stomach rolled suddenly, as it did whenever she outright lied. Nick stood in the center of her small piece of Zootopia, clothed in lazy eveningwear with strands of his fur slightly ruffled. She had grown accustomed to him being bedecked in his uniform blues and the sharpness that came with it. Yet, even in his plain attire…it had to be the glaze of exhaustion that filtered Nick now, the ratty tee shirt flattering the contours of his body in elegant simplicity.

Judy smacked her lips as she began, "So…now that you're here…what, um…." She shook her head, trying to knock sense into her skull. An ear drowsily flopped down over a tired eye, and she grunted.

Nick chuckled as she fumbled at the renegade appendage. "Well, now that I'm here and you're up…how'd it go with Lionheart?"

"Uh, it could've gone better, but, eh…." She struggled to recount the raw emotions that had been unleashed in the prison meeting room. Lionheart's laugh still rang in her floppy ears; the denigration of her profession, of herself, still stung as deeply as it had that afternoon. Nick understood that kind of pain — he had often told of the terror he experienced in his younger days at the hands of similar cruelty. Yet, shaping it into words, expressing it clearly, was beyond difficult. She settled for summarizing her visit.

"Called you  _cute_ , did he? He should've known better." His usual smirk flattened in a display of...empathy, perhaps? Judy figured that Nick really did care. Presenting it, however, had never been his forte. Oddly, Judy discovered herself to be… _charmed_  by Nick's display, as insignificant as it may have seemed.

"…and what do we have here? All these papers…." Judy also discovered that her attention had faded. In the brief interim, Nick had sidled over to her mess of a desk and was rifling through the dozens of crumpled, torn, and smudged sheets. They were pieces of some grand plan, but disparate, disjointed, unreasonable, and certainly nothing ready to present to the critical eye of Nicholas Wilde.

Judy swooped in, and she bashed Nick's paw. He exhaled sharply as she swerved into the gap between Nick and the desk and scooped up every loose leaf of her plan; she may have even thrown an elbow or two to box out her compatriot. He played along — he probably had deduced what was scribbled on those pages and, being Nick, only wanted to stir up a little trouble for his weary partner.

"Nothing! It's nothing at all! Just — don't!" A stray page had escaped her grasp. Nick was faster. He laughed as he played keep-away against Judy's quasi-free paw. Her other had smashed the papers to her chest, but as she danced around to retrieve Nick's prize, other leaves fell from her grip. The duo circled the apartment at least three times before Judy huffed and tossed everything to the ground. Crumpled pages splashed across her floor.

Nick didn't seem to notice. He was too engrossed in the one he possessed. "Hmm…a hearts and minds campaign. Interesting, if naïve." He chucked aside the page. Judy glared with paws firmly planted on hips as Plan H out of BB — she had twice exhausted the alphabet in her lettering system — fluttered to its resting spot.

"And just  _why_  is it naïve to want to reach people's hearts?" she demanded with a forceful and strong voice, as her waltz with Nick had been invigorating.

"C'mon Carrots. People don't  _trust_  politicians. You need to relate to your voters, sure, but it can't be all niceties and smiles. Gotta give 'em something  _good_. Something meaningful to them in their daily lives. Think hearts, minds, and  _wallets_ , sweetheart."

She stood strong, ready to berate her vulpine partner. "Y'know what Nick, I…." A wagging finger fell away. Her mouth opened just a tad as she thought it over. " _Wallets,_ " she whispered.

"That's right," Nick interjected, "they wanna know how they can get a job or feed their kids just as much as they wanna smile. Lobos'll know that, I guarantee it."

Her burst of energy drained away. She stared at Nick's tee shirt fluttering gently in her apartment's languid air conditioning and lost her focus in the ruffles of his fur. The motions were random but complemented each other in an alluring fashion. This time, both ears drooped over her eyes. "Wallets…I never would've thought of that." And she collapsed to the floor.

Nick crossed the distance in a heartbeat. A sturdy paw soon clasped and warmed the small of her back. She craned her neck back enough to catch the neon glow of the city slide along the strands of his fur. A surreal glow surrounded her partner.

It took several quiet moments for Judy to open up. Nick was patient with her. She sniffled, fighting back the tears born from awful frustration. "Nick, I don't know what to do. This isn't…all of this, the politicking, the people, managing a campaign, it's nothing that I know anything about! I'm not even sure where to  _start_. These papers, they're all just  _worthless_!" She had a natural ability to kick well, and her foot let loose and splattered a dozen or so pages on the opposite wall.

Her momentum kicked her backward and nestled her in Nick's cradling forelimb. She breathed a few times, and every muscle in her body relaxed. She had not felt comfortable all day, but in Nick's forelimbs, she could let a soft smile brighten her face.

Together, they waited for Judy regain her spirit. Nick's head had shifted into the path of the window, which let a blue aura collect at the tips of his ears. It was distractingly beautiful, and Judy nestled closer to Nick. The azure light vibrated with his fur as they sat together, not speaking and telling volumes all the same. Judy was content to let her mind go blank, which left her with no clue as to how much time had passed before Nick spoke again.

"Done with your tantrum, Carrots?"

She scoffed as she squirmed. "Oh, Nick, you certainly know how to ruin it, don't'cha."

"A specialty of mine, partner. Now then, Miss Mayor, let's get you to work." He didn't give a rude shove, but it was imbued with purpose. Her muscles engaged again, and strength surged through her veins. She hopped to her feet; Nick was more deliberate in rising from the floor.

"Okay then…okay." Judy's mind was clearer, sharper. The short break with the sturdy Nick restored the shiny veneer to her lavender eyes, and she blinked a few times as ideas percolated. "So, I figure I shouldn't be managing this campaign."

"Because you'll be too busy winning it, that's right."

Judy allowed herself a congenial laugh. "Right! So I will need someone to do that for me."

Judy was pacing in a straight and narrow line, from one baseboard to the other. Nick stayed clear of her path, having plunked down in her desk chair. She could hear the squeaking as he bounced ever so slightly.

"Did you have someone in mind, partner?"

She paused, and her eyes whipped to the chair. Nick twitched with the smallest dose of surprise. "I did indeed, Mr. Wilde."

With a flourish, he placed an innocent-looking paw on his chest. "Do you mean  _moi_? What a tempting offer, Ms. Hopps. Of course, I don't think you could afford me. I  _am_  an expert, after all. Sought after by many of the greatest political minds of our time and whatnot."

His mocking tone made her grunt. She crossed her forelimbs and tapped an impatient foot. She had the utmost confidence in her ability to outlast his foolishness.

She did. "But, in your case, I could perhaps make an exception to my usual fees." From his seat, Nick issued a shallow bow. "At your service, Your Honor."

"And I accept. Looking forward to working with you." This time, her unnecessary formality elicited a snort from her new campaign manager. She grinned while Nick alighted from the chair and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his candidate.

"Alright then, Candidate Hopps. As your new campaign manager, I have some suggestions for strategy. But, before we get into those nitty-gritty details, the first thing we'll need is some support."

"Support?"

"Oh, right, we'll have to brief you on the parlance," Nick mumbled. Judy cocked an eyebrow as her campaign manager produced a broad grin. "I mean money, my dear mayoral wannabe. We need some  _capital_."

She gasped, which was a short and quiet sound. "We need money already?" A far-flung part of her knew that eventuality loomed on the horizon. Still, to hear Nick mention it while bathed in the blue of the city, while their idea so young…it shocked her.

"Well, filing campaign declaration documents won't be cheap. And that'll be step one out of a few hundred, all of which will require cash."

"Oh." She wished she had said something smarter. Nick grumbled, possibly in assent, she had trouble telling. Now freed from Nick's limbs, her strength wavered. "But without a strategy, how will we know how much cash we'll need?"

"More, Candidate Hopps. We'll always need more. But you don't worry about that now; your manager will."

Bright canines lit up with the azure glow that coated her room. Before, it had been similar to the color of her Bunnyburrow sky over carrot fields but drained of the same vitality; it had been dry, not ugly but unappealing in its own right. With Nick's devilish grin, though, the azure was enlivened and beautiful again. She sighed. "All right then...where will we go to start?"

A flash sprinted across his emerald eyes; she was plenty awake to catch that. Then he chuckled, a rather devious laugh that sent adrenaline shooting through Judy once more. Alertness returned as Nick pondered, "I have a good idea on where to start."

Nick wheeled around on his heel, heading right for the door. Judy thought about stopping him, but her curiosity overrode her caution. She scampered behind while her mind wandered into unforeseen possibilities. She ran through a mental index of Nick's contacts — she knew far too many of them for comfort. One after another, she crossed them off her list. Though, she supposed, it depended on  _how much_  money Nick equated with  _more_ and how quickly they would need it. She refiled her list and began anew.

So lost was she in thought that she wandered directly into Nick's back. He stood frozen while Judy mumbled some type of apology, though Nick didn't seem to be listening. "Oh, before we go, I'll need something back from you." A gust blew in his wake as he leaped away and threw open the door to her laughably tiny closet, where he started rooting through her clothing with reckless abandon.

Judy was still rubbing her nose when she caught sight of Nick's impromptu and undisciplined search. She was displeased, to phrase it mildly. "What're you doing Nick!"

"That jacket — where  _is_ it? Gotta be here somewhere."

It took her a moment to catch on. "The one from the party?" Thoughts from a colder night swirled back around her. The heavy padding pressed against her shoulders, and she flopped her arms in the too-long sleeves, letting the fabric fall from the elbow. Faint traces of Nick were trapped in the fibers, released by the warmth of his guiding paw and the sheets of her bed that she wrapped around herself after a night of excess carrot purée.

And she remembered where the jacket lay. "Nick, wait, it's not in there." Shirts and sundries whizzed by her ear, which flopped in front of her eye. "Nick…Nick, stop! Hang on!" And she hopped into the fray, lavender eyes aflame once more in the blue of the city.


	6. Chapter 3: Part II

_Run_

"You really should call 'em back. They're probably worried sick…and if you don't do it soon, they're gonna let you  _have it_."

Judy spun her phone between her paws. The black screen glinted as it nabbed the subdued lighting in the vehicle's cabin. She squirmed as two burly guards — polar bears with impeccably manicured white fur and clothed in bespoke suits — sat opposite her in the limousine. A minor bout of claustrophobia hovered somewhere close.

She ignored Nick's advice and slipped the phone back into her pocket. It took some finagling in the cramped quarters. While she handled that, she offered, "I'm surprised he was up this late."

"Really?"

Judy turned away, her paw propping up her heavy head. She noticed a loose thread hanging from the hem of her jacket sleeve and half-heartedly blew at it. "…no. But the fact he wanted to meet…and so soon. Is that a good thing, Nick?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the noncommittal shrug that would madden a less seasoned partner. "Guess we'll find out, Hopps."

Azure signs had given way to the palette that swirled in the very earliest of the morning. Muted lights illumined from shop windows. Harsh white office bulbs ignited. The first ray of sunlight curved over the horizon and glanced off the powdering of snow that signaled the edge of Tundratown. Judy watched out the window — tinted, which dulled the exquisite hues that played in the sky outside.

Apart from her incredibly vigilant guards, the ride was terrifically smooth. And terrifically boring. She must have stifled half a dozen yawns while the ornate limousine had whisked them away from her drab apartment and barreled down the empty predawn roadways. Calm, uneventful…depleting. The only thing keeping her awake was the small ticking sound her jacket sleeve's button made when it collided with the window as she dozed off intermittently.

Nick had mostly kept to himself. Judy found the quietness in the vehicle wholly unnerving. She could invariably count on Nick to shatter any such silence with the most inane of comments or snidest of remarks. Yet, he picked at a claw and held eye contact with the floorboard. Judy wondered how Nick truly felt about this trip. His smile, which had broadened after he located his dinner jacket back in her apartment, had evaporated when the car had arrived, as if reality were settling in to his great displeasure.

_Let's find out how much cash we can get to start, and then we can whip up some ideas around that_. He sounded so confident in the confines of her slice of the city. Could it be now that Nick Wilde had doubts about his plan?

She had to ask. "Nick, you doing alright?"

"Just fine, Carrots." Perhaps a little harsher than he had expected it to sound. He scrunched his face, which encouraged Judy to chuckle airily. He wasn't amused. "Try to nap, would ya? It'll be a long meeting in—"

"Quiet. We're here." The first three words — and probably the only three words — Judy and Nick would hear that guard utter. Gravelly and authoritative, he would have made for an excellent cop in another life. A soft pop, and the door gave way. Judy nearly spilled out of her seat. Flighty feet landed on chilled permafrost. The cold pricked at first, but with a few solid steps, she warmed to it. Walking around could do her exhausted body some good, she thought.

She heard Nick laugh as she executed a couple deep stretches. She didn't care…they did the trick. She rubbed her baggy eyes and hopped in place. It all looked patently ridiculous, she did not doubt that. But now, as she faced down a foreboding door, Judy knew her faculties would need to be in place.

They were wordlessly shoved inside, a guard's fat paw never leaving their shoulders as they meandered through narrow hallways. It certainly wasn't their affinity for police that kept these guards attached. Along their path, they passed by several open doors and nabbed bits of whispered deals and discussions of questionable legality. Judy was overwhelmingly glad she had opted to swap out her uniform for the plain attire adorning her now. There likely would have been trouble had she started flashing that badge of hers around here.

Nick rolled one shoulder out from his guard's vice grip and leaned just slightly into Judy's space. His voice was rather hoarse — nervous, even — as he whispered, "Let's try to avoid the ice this time, m'kay?"

She let fly a scornful stare. "Wasn't my fault the last time,  _Nick_." He huffed while she softened. "Besides, Mr. Big isn't  _all_ bad. He buys good cake!" The cake bit was true, but something inside of her caught on the rest of her words. Disbelief in her own sentence spawned quickly.

"Oh, well then…I'll keep that in mind."

Their journey concluded in the ornately decorated room they expected. The foreboding sense had dissipated somewhat during their walk and, for some reason, it did not surge again here in the cloistered realm of Mr. Big. At least, Judy did not sense it. But she watched the barely perceptible waves of tremors shake Nick's fur from his feet to his ears. Nick the worrywart again. Though, given his typical encounter with Mr. Big, perhaps he had a valid reason to be concerned.

The room was largely unchanged. The familiar desk stood away, the tiny chair situated on its top. The whole set had been polished recently, varnished wood that almost sparkled like the pieces of the ice floe underfoot. "Wait here," barked one of the guards before they plodded out the other door.

Torpid minutes passed. Enough time for Tundratown to start chilling the fire in Judy's belly. Her surety of purpose came under assault from pesky doubts. Sensing Nick's uncertainty, and wanting to avoid calamity, she tried withholding her words. But, as one minute folded into the next, the doubts began to win the skirmish.

She wondered if Nick could ease those doubts, turn the tide of the battle within her. And perhaps having another set of thoughts to mull in his mind would calm him. She spoke. "Maybe this isn't such a good idea."

Given the alarm Nick had to be currently experiencing, Judy was surprised by his quick answer. "Y'know, isn't that what everyone told you when you wanted to be a cop?"

_Right_. Taken aback, Judy tilted onto her heels and took the chance to stretch her aching leg muscles. It cleared her head for a couple seconds, long enough to remember the passing comment of the creature trapped in the white windowless box. "About that. When I spoke with Lionheart, he hinted that there was more at play. That I wasn't…I'm not…." Judy had ignored Lionheart's chatter for long enough. But now, to give voice to the accusation that her career had begun on a stranger's whim…she was stymied.

Nick was not. "Wait. You actually listened to Lionheart about something? C'mon Carrots, you're better than that. He'd say  _anything_  to get in your head." Her old moniker was making quite the comeback. Intriguing that it reappeared whenever Nick was perturbed. She jotted a mental note to later investigate how far that could be stressed.

Regardless, Nick was right again. And she found his words ameliorative. They were softening some doubts, but others still buzzed about. She altered her tack. "So walk me through this… if Mr. Big gives money to us, given what he, you know,  _gets into_ …I mean, is that…bad money? And if we take it…." She trailed off as Nick clicked his tongue.

"Eh. Maybe it's bad money. Who knows — and don't ask him where it came from either. But, no matter the source of this cash, if he gives us anything at all, it's going to something good.  _You_  are a good cause. And I guess that kinda changes things. You could even call it  _redemption_  if you wanted to... _I_ wouldn't, but hey." He sounded reasonable — likely, he had planned for just this sort of objection.

Yet, she wasn't tremendously settled by his thoughts. "I…I don't know, Nick. I thought I was okay with it." And she had been. Excited eyes had opened wide when the limo whipped up to her curb. That thrill, though, had waned in the span of a few heartbeats. Questions, doubts, had flooded in as a replacement. "Now that we're here…."

"Hey." Not terse like she would have expected. Reassuring, actually. "You're getting cold feet. I know it's scary being here…believe me." She could not miss the much larger shudders that rolled along his body and collided with one another. A stormy sea of fur, partially obscured by a lopsided dinner jacket, roiled in the darkened room. "But this is part of what we'll have to do. This kinda stuff…we have a lot more to go."

Pondering his words offered Judy a brief reprieve from her own problems. Nevertheless, more doubts rose from the field. "But what if somebody starts asking about this money. I mean, how can you defend it? "

He was borderline flippant in his response. "Nobody  _cares_  enough to ask about it. It'll put most anyone right to sleep. Ya don't hear Gazelle singing any chart-toppers about campaign finance, yeah?"

Judy stewed in silence for a few moments. Nick wore the pleading frown that had cost Judy a decent amount in Jumbeaux's Cafe long ago. Resistance to that look of his had come at a significant price. She let out a horribly weary sigh. "…I guess. But just because no one cares doesn't make it  _right_ , Nick. I just…I don't know how I  _feel_  about _—_ "

" _Perhaps_ , Carrots," Nick stated rather decisively, "we can argue the complexities of the morality of this money that  _I don't know if we'll even get_  another time? Like when we're  _not standing in Mr. Big's home?_ "

Indeed, Judy had not considered her surroundings when she launched her inquiry. Though she was far from satisfied, she bashfully batted at the hem of the ludicrously expensive floor rug  _— definitely_  not made of skunk-butt  _—_  with her foot. "Fair point." And the door flew wide open.

The two guards again crossed the room, but one was cradling their benefactor in a meaty paw. The raspy voice began before he had even reached his seat. "Ah, the finest officer of the Zootopia Police Department. What a pleasure to be having you grace my room with your illustrious presence." His gracious compliments had Judy titter softly, even as a part of her wondered how much of it was just honey. Their meeting, though, was already warmer than usual. At least until Mr. Big had claimed his seat and set eyes upon her compatriot. "Mr. Wilde. I was most surprised to have received your call. Especially as you may have a few certain outstanding debts that require repayment."

And just like that, Judy was livid. Nick had sworn off his old ways — or so he claimed. In a flash, his arguments of bad money for good reasons were revealed to be a smokescreen, as hollow as the promise he had made. Thoughts of what dastardly deeds Nick had committed flooded her mind while her muscles coiled, ready to pounce.

She nearly missed Mr. Big's rough chuckle, the sound of a burlap sack of gravel being tossed about. "A joke, Ms. Hopps." He must have noticed the tension building — even though she had not realized how high-strung she was at present. "Our debts were settled long ago. Although, given you being here on this fine and early morning, I imagine that that will soon no longer be true."

"Just maybe, sir, because I've got a great deal for you!" Nick brandished his trademark smile. Judy forcibly restrained the groan.

Mr. Big appeared unmoved. "And what deal would that be, Mr. Wilde?"

Slick gestures manifested in his paws. He slid around the room, expertly drawing attention to where he wanted it. "Change is in the air, Mr. Big. A new day dawns over our fair city. Fresh energy that can make a real difference. Everyone will want in on it. And  _you_ , good sir, get to come in on the  _ground floor_  and be an original supporter of the next Mayor of Zootopia!"

Nick flourished his aggrandizement with a wide grin. He had properly animated himself. Judy observed the emeralds in his eyes gleam like jewels. There was passion emanating from their cores…enough to rid the exhaustion from Judy's system, if only for a short while.

Mr. Big sat stoically while Nick receded back to Judy. Some throat-clearing grumbles — someone running over the bag of gravel with a truck — and he asked, "Are you this candidate, Mr. Wilde?"

A jitter coursed through Nick's cheeks, his grin short-circuiting momentarily. "No sir, this fine candidate is standing right next to me!" He opened his arms wide and directed the room to Judy, who flinched involuntarily. She gave a rather shy wave and smile.

"And so, Ms. Hopps, you come to me this day to seek, what? Financial support for your candidacy?"

"She does indeed," Nick interceded, stepping forward. His toes cleared the edge of the rug. "And I'll tell you why you should—"

Nick didn't get the chance. A tiny paw went up and the fox shut his mouth. "Mr. Wilde, I would like to be hearing this from the candidate herself. If you would go ahead and step aside so that we can speak."

"…yeah, o-of course, Mr. Big, sir…." Nick was truly flabbergasted. Judy had never seen him so lost, so deprived of the joy he extracted from his banter. She quite nearly laughed.

Mr. Big did not sound icy or cruel — rather, he was very nearly conciliatory. "One of my associates here will obtain for you a beverage of your choosing. Do you have a preference, Mr. Wilde?"

Something to pacify her campaign manager. He twitched in odd ways as he thought. "…coffee?"

With a wave, Mr. Big set to task one of his burly guards. For such a large creature, he made little noise as he slipped through the side door and down whatever hall lay behind it. Nick waited patiently right around one of the corners of the room, as far from Mr. Big as possible.

Having effectively neutralized Nick, Mr. Big continued, "So then, Ms. Hopps, what exactly would you ask from me?"

At that exact time, she reached the somewhat disconcerting realization that she and Nick had never discussed an actual figure. It was evident that Mr. Big certainly had the capacity to give a lot. And they had felt rather confident in their linkage with him. But her campaign manager had never reconciled those to produce a real number — or if he had, it was now locked away in the corner of the room where Nick huddled.

A solid litmus test for her skills. She took a deep breath. "Well, sir, first off, I realize I have not thanked you for your time yet. We really are grateful for this opportunity." When Mr. Big murmured a kind of acknowledgment, she rolled on. "Sir…our city, it's good. It's a wonderful place to experience life. To find yourself and what you're truly meant to be. But, recently I found out that not everyone has the opportunity to find themselves. To be anything they want to be. And that bothers me...no, it  _infuriates me_. Just like it should do for any one of us who call this city our home."

The words sprung from nowhere — no, that wasn't true. They were always there. Buried deep within her soul by the ceaseless frustrations of her position. All suddenly freed. The fire rose. "So I suppose, sir, I'm asking you to help make this city a  _home_  for those who have not found it yet. That's what I want to do. It's what I've done as a police officer, and I believe it's what I must do as a leader, as a citizen of Zootopia. Our leaders now, I think they've forgotten that. So…it's time to  _remind_  them."

Her call to action hung in the heavy air of the room. She stood, immovable, eyes that hinted of lavender trained on the shriveled shrew before her. The door creaked open — Judy did not relent — and Nick could be heard sheepishly thanking the guard for bringing a delectably-scented cup of coffee. Mr. Big was a stone until his guard returned to his side. Then, "How much do you need?"

The dreaded number. She had to think fast. Next to Mr. Big rested a notepad and pen of reasonable size — out of place in this room, she thought. Regardless, it would suit her needs commendably. In a swift motion, she seized the pad and pen, and she scribbled down a number. A big number. She folded it up and placed it in front of her potential donor. "This."

A slow and deliberate unfurling, careful study of Judy's note, and Mr. Big grunted. In an instant, panic electrified her spirit. Her mind churned as she contemplated the meaning behind that grunt. Nick slurped loudly, clearly disdainful of being relegated to the corner. No help there.

A throat cleared, then the raspy voice rose. "You have been good to my family, my daughter, and her fourteen children."

From over her head, Judy caught Nick coughing on his beverage. She suppressed the smirk she so desperately wanted to throw back to him.

"And for this, I want to repay you. Additionally, I am thinking it would be good to be owed a favor from the Mayor of our fine city." A hoarse chuckle. Steadfast Judy did not blink. "So I will give you what you need to begin this campaign."

The thrill was undeniable. Injected into every fiber of her being. She vibrated with newfound energy — not the jolt of fear, but rather the warmth of relief. Concerns still lived, that was true. But with this success — this  _win_  — her doubts lost much ground in that darkened room so early in the morning.

Mr. Big motioned toward Nick. "Now, Mr. Wilde, you may return to this conversation. Our candidate here should not concern herself with the minutiae of my donation. My associates here, they will work out details with you while Ms. Hopps and I discuss some final points of noteworthiness."

The room shifted. Nick bounded up to his partner, his eyelid twitching manically. "What did you ask for?" he whispered harshly as the guards closed the distance with terrific speed.

She allowed herself a rare smug grin. "A number fit for Mr. Big." She patted him on the chest.

"Thanks, Carrots. Appreciate the help." Sardonicism vented, Nick slapped the cheeky grin back on his face and went to work with the guards. "So, boys, how about one big fat check, that oughta do it…."

Nick's voice floated off as Mr. Big summoned Judy close to his chair. At some point, he had risen and wobbled over to the desk's edge. An awkward height — Judy had to half-bend a knee to level her eyes with his.

"I want you to know this," he began in a volume barely above a whisper. "Your words showed careful thought. But I am aware that you are one of action. I remember our time together during the Night Howler incident and what you  _did_ , not what you said. This is why I am choosing to support you, Ms. Hopps."

A bunny of action…nothing surprising there, she thought. Still, such praise, even if it came from Zootopia's most notorious mafia don, was a tad delightful. "I see. Thank you, sir."

He mumbled on. "This,  _money_ , of mine, it is irrelevant. I have more, there is always more, I do not care if it is used up. Instead, what I give you, Ms. Hopps, and what is of far greater value, is a pledge, to you and yours. As  _famiglia._ " A tiny shrew's paw rested on her own. "I do not know if you will win…but you will put up a strong fight, and you will follow your heart. That is assurance enough for me."

For a formidable crime boss —  _oops, businessman I mean_  — Mr. Big was really in touch with his deeper thought and feelings. Understanding others was probably vital to conducting business —  _wait, crime? No, business! —_  in his particular line of work. Perhaps she should not have been so shocked. Nonetheless, she failed to hold back her look of surprise.

Her new benefactor noticed. "It must be quite unexpected to hear me speaking this way. But this,  _kindness_ , I am showing you — do not have loose lips about what I am sharing with you. I cannot have those around me thinking me malleable. Given your association with him, others will think Mr. Wilde has fooled me into taking it easy on him. That is something that I can ill afford. Do you understand?"

A quick answer. "Uh-huh — um, I mean, yessir!"

"Good, very good…" Mr. Big muttered into incoherency. He delicately waved her back as he trundled back toward his little chair. Nick and the guards had commandeered the corner where he had been waiting impatiently. Muffled words, even with Judy's expert ear trained on the group. Notes of Nick's voice would overtake the others — excited sounds, positive even. They ended their parlay with high and warm tones — a good sign, Judy believed.

"We're good, Hopps," he said right into Judy's ear. She winced enough to get a snicker from Nick.

"To your satisfaction, Mr. Wilde?"

"Completely, sir." And it sounded like Nick really meant it. She examined him, noticed the loss of the atypical tension that had racked his body only minutes before. The emeralds in his eyes glistened brilliantly. The smallest of gasps escaped Judy's pursed lips.

"Very good then. My associates will escort you to the limousine. Ms. Hopps, I am eager to see what you can do."

"Me too, sir."

And meaty paws returned to their shoulders.

Back in the hallways, as they passed again the doors with shady deals behind them, Judy's thrill rapidly chilled. A creeping realization intruded as Nick's  _morality of this money_ , as he phrased it, became realized. No longer trapped in the abstract. The doubts poured back in.

It was almost magical, Nick's timing. He leaned back and whispered into her ear. "Stop your worrying. I didn't take the money."

She nearly tripped over herself. "Whaa—" she started to scream, but her paw held back the fury trying to escape her mouth. "But…but I thought we  _needed_  that money, Nick!"

The devilish smirk. "Thing is…ya  _needed_  to know you could do it."

She stared in incredulity. The polar bear's paw had to put in extra effort to keep pace with Nick's movement. Her fear, her thrill, her panic…for what? "Do…."

He shrugged. "Make an ask like that. And — to be totally transparent — I needed to know it, too. And ya did a good job, actually. A little confidence boost, I hope."

In her mind, she watched the jitters roll along Nick's fur.  _Not for Mr. Big…but for me._  Oddly, she felt a little sheepish. She had been duped, sure, and she would not relent so easily on that front. Yet, by some strange logic, Nick found himself in the right once more. Or, maybe it was all simply her overwhelming relief in not being forced to justify taking a crime boss's money. Regardless, she allowed a small smile as they neared the front door to Mr. Big's estate. "A heads-up would've been nice."

Nick snorted. "Nah, ya needed the surprise factor. Only way to do it properly. But from now on, the truth and only the truth for you, Candidate Hopps."

The emeralds in his eyes still shone brilliantly. Alive, purposeful. In tandem with the black dinner jacket that was just a hair too big and the grin that was just a shade too cool, Nick looked stunning. Her polar bear guard gave a few shoves as she slowed, studying every angle, every view, of this Nick. The one who had guided her to her real voice.

"Hey, so…" she said as the polar bear helped her catch up to him again. "Do you have more ideas on places to go and people to ask, Nick?"

"Eh, a few."

His nonchalance would normally have her ripping out her own fur. But, a calmness pervaded her spirit. Even Nick being Nick could not ruffle her now, nor could the thought of what wrath Mr. Big would deliver now that she had rejected his generous gift….

"Is he going to be a problem?"

"Who, Mr. Big? Why?"

"Well, we said we'd take his money…and now we're not."

"Wouldn't worry about him."

Too collected, even for Nick. He had been shaking when they arrived. Even if the tremors were for her performance, crossing Mr. Big should have elicited some kind of response from someone who was very nearly iced for betraying Mr. Big's trust before. She was pretty drained, but her tired mind developed a strong hypothesis, which she floated out to her campaign manager.

"Hey, wait. Did you set this whole thing u—"

The door opened. Judy threw her arm over her eyes and squinted in the bright light of morning.

"My — how long were we in there! Nick! What time is it!" She scrambled for her phone and shrieked when the clock displayed. "We need to be  _at the precinct_ , like, now!"

Her rabbit legs carried her to the waiting car in three bounds. She could hear him speaking. "Yeah, okay, right behind ya! Just need to make a few calls first…." She slid into her seat and looked back to the foreboding front door. And Nick had disappeared.

"Wait…wait! Ni—"The door slammed. And the limo peeled off toward the skyline alive with the colors of a new morning.

#


End file.
